


You Were Always Mine

by Punk_in_Docs



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Crimson Peak (2015) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Seduction, Crimson Peak Spoilers, Divorce, Divorced Partners, Edwardian Period, Edwardian era, Ex-Partners, Exes, F/M, Historical, Post-Divorce, Post-mortem, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romance, Seduction, death of a minor character, post Crimson Peak, violence from an ex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2018-10-03 16:16:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 38
Words: 193,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10251218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punk_in_Docs/pseuds/Punk_in_Docs
Summary: Set, 1909. In which Vianne Earnest-James is a rich Heiress, back in London, engaged to be married. When who should show up but her ex-husband, Thomas Sharpe. With his sister dead, and rich beyond imagining as a wealthy, successful inventor. He is determined not to lose his wife for a second time.... Join this world of honour, secrets, seduction, stolen kisses and dance cards. Lust, and divorce, and one man's determination to reclaim the woman he loves before she weds another man......Thomas will not be parted from what is so rightfully his...





	1. Stolen Kisses and Ex Husbands

**Author's Note:**

> AU Tom Hiddleston - Romantic, Historical Romance, Edwardian Fic.  
> Based off the imagine; 'Thomas spying on you after your divorce and doing anything to get you back. Including threatening your new beau.' credits go to the lovely ladies at Tom-Hiddleston-Imagine.Tumblr.com. Link to the imagine here.... http://tom-hiddleston-imagines.tumblr.com/post/158156795440/gif-lokihiddleston-imagine-thomas-spying-on-you https://punk-in-docs.tumblr.com/Masterlist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Howl - Florence and the Machine

 

 

 

~ 

  

_She didn’t see him at first._

But he would be lying to himself if he pretended that wasn’t his intention all along. He snuck around the fringes of the ballroom, like the way a panther would keep hidden from the sight of it’s prey. _Stalking,_ _Waiting. Wanting_. The reason he was able to slip through crowds so quietly, was that rumours churned behind him when his back was turned. He was a rich, self made man now, but Society Mama’s clutched their daughters close, rather than _throwing them_ to the dark haired man to exchange introductions. They warned their eager girls not to be driven to distraction by his handsome, exotic, mystery and his sable, beguiling beauty. _Indeed not._ He was _no_ easy catch for a meek debutante. Thomas Sharpe was _tainted._

The kind of taint that would _ruin_ an un-wed girl. But the kind of taint that would make a man, _formidable._

Most men would retreat to the shadows of their ruin and take comfort in their fortune. To lead their solitary lives behind closed doors. _Not he_. He _would flourish_ in this sordid kind of corrupted splendour.

No one knew, nor could ascertain _why_ he was back in London. Alone. He flattered himself that he was enjoying the privileges of his newfound wealth, the novelty of being a famous inventor was still fresh to him. So he was able to seek attendance to parties and balls _wherever_ he chose, people threw open their doors to him now, the wealthy, dangerous aristocrat. And he strode in eager to familiarise himself with the frivolous clutches of men and women that made up Edwardian society. Dressed head to toe in formal coat and tails, all his clothing black as ink. His pallor stood out against the onyx shade of his clothing, matching the obsidian of his unusually long hair. Of course, the other thing that made his reputation positively shrouded in menace, was the large scar that carved down, like the marked trails of a crimson tear, down his cheekbone, under his left eye.

He found, smugly, that his position suited him. People left him alone at balls, and whispered and gasped about him in his wake. He didn’t have to bother himself with tedious small talk with men, nor flatter and wheedle women whom he’d never met, with idle compliments.

He stalked slowly, living in the shadows of the outer edge of the ball he was now at. Watching inwards, at the crowds of people gaggled to the centre of the room before him. Chatting, laughing, carrying on the tiresome monotony of being upstanding, and respected in society. Gossiping about other peoples lives, and offering speculation and judgement if someone fell short of their strict standards in any way. His arms were clasped behind his back, and his eyes were restless. Wandering over every woman, and man within his sight. _Calculating, searching, inspecting._

She _was here_. Somewhere, dotted in amongst this irksome gathering, _he just knew it.     ._

He _would not_ let himself relax until he’d spotted her. His eyes rapaciously straining  to look for her. Longing to catch sight of her beguiling, unique beauty. That pale, elegant neck he used to adore kissing, biting and gazing at. The way it, _so prettily_ , held her elegant head high. Her hair, that _fine,_ _pale copper_ , colouring, _the colour of fire._ The very same tresses his hands itched to tangle in. The pair of eyes that were sea-foam blue, their shade changed in the honey gold of candlelight that bathed the room. 

He’d heard rumour of her, that she had fled Cumbria, and returned home. She was an heiress now. _Rich, eligible, and admired_. Many a young, penniless man would want to seek her for a wife, to woo and seduce her merely for her riches alone. Cozying up to her, for their _own selfishness_ of needing a moneyed wife.

The thought of some _puppyish, boy_ , trying to flirt his way into her arms made his jaw grit, and his body tense and flood with bitter rage. _She was his_. Not the property of some, idiotic, money hungry _fool._ He knew if he saw some, rogue, trying to seduce and flatter her, here tonight, that he would be sure to remind them that his property _was not_ to be _tampered_ with. _On pain of death…_

There was also another rumour, of her, that he had heard. One that incensed him _very greatly._ Which was that, _apparently_ , she was also soon to be _engaged._

That would simply, _not do_.

On, and on, he carried looking. His eyes not resting until he found her. Taking in every figure, every form. None of which were her. He was searching for his treasure in a sea of coloured dresses, and formal black tie. Lo, and behold, when some people slide away to find a refreshment, to take a seat, or to go and dance... _there she was._

 _At last. It was her._ _He had found her._

There was _no mistaking it_. Not having seen him yet, as she smiled and chatted with someone of no consequence. Her delectable form draped in a corseted, blue silk dress that matched her eyes, the straps hanging delectably off her pale shoulders. Elegantly exposing her creamy skin, the tops of her breasts and her collarbone. That very same skin he remembered flushed _so obviously_ when he whispered filthy things into her ear. She looked like a woman of high rank, and wealth. Diamond jewellery glittered on her throat and her lobes, her copper hair was perfectly coiffed into a refined, neat style that his hands warranted to muss as he claimed her for himself once again.

He wasn’t a very articulate, amorous man, but seeing her once more, after longing for her, for months, he was reminded of a line of text from a well known bard; ‘ _And then, in dreaming the clouds methought would open and show riches, ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again.’_ Seeing her was like having the clouds part before him, and show him the sunshine after years of darkness and misery.

He allowed himself a satisfied smirk. Watching her, knowing full well now she was within _his grasp_. It made him _ravenous_ once again. Lust swelling in his blood. Remembering how those rosebud lips had moaned _his_ name when he took her. _How she’d arched and writhed in his arms, reaching her climax, moaning his name along with gods._

He strode towards her now with powerful purpose. _The hungry hunter closing in for its wounded prey._ Hanging back, only for a second, as more people slowly drifted away from her conversational party as a dance began in the adjoining ballroom. He noted now, with utter disdain, how the tall, tawny haired man by her side, smiled at her, and paid her _special, affectionate attention._ He spoke softly to her, and she laughed as a consequence. He moved ever closer, and closer. Now he was only a metre away…

Her head lifted, and her eyes turned, merely glancing in his direction, but widening with realisation when she saw him. The face of the man, who’d fronted her nightmares ever since they’d parted, divorcing, a year ago, it was now. Her lips gaped open in shocked, her body rigid, and her eyes froze on him. Unable to look anywhere else, or pay attention to another living soul. It was as if the ballroom around her melted away, it all crumbled into insignificance, aside from him. Standing tall. Dark, and as dashing as he ever had been, even with that raw, red scar marring his face. He stood as a monument to her old life, a chapter of her life she only lived now through her nightmares.

He came to stand opposite her, all the while his eyes, smug and piercing, burned into her own. Prickling fear and shock into her. The hair at the nape of her neck bristled, and he could see her chest heave, as her breathing became erratic. He watched her swallow, nervously as he came to a stop, garnering all her attention. And keeping it.

“Good evening. Miss James.” He drones in a gravelly greeting.

She swallows once more, unable to fathom he was here, stood across from her.

“G-good evening... Mr Sharpe.”

She blinks back at him, her honeyed voice uncertain and hesitant. Very obviously affected by his presence. She was hideous at hiding her surprise. _He could read her like an open book…_

The man by her side then felt the need to speak up. Thomas was cosmopolitan enough to admit when he found another man handsome, and he _certainly was that_. He had a broad, classically handsome face, with a strong chin, prominent, blazing eyes, and a wide, attractive smile. His hair was thick, and chestnut brown. Speckled with the colour of rust in the candlelight.

“I don’t believe I’ve made _your_ acquaintance. _Sir_.” He speaks affably.

“Henry. Henry St. Clair…” She speaks up, “ _This, is_ Thomas Sharpe, he… is- _uh._ An-“ She struggled. This made Thomas grin wider.

“ _An old_ acquaintance…” Thomas leers. Looking at the man for the briefest of seconds, before his eyes pierced straight into hers once more.

“We used to be on, _very intimate_ , terms.” He grinned darkly. Watching her flush a little.

“I _see._.” Henry spoke. He was no imbecile, Thomas could sense, the man obviously picking up the awkwardness in _what was not_ being said. He then turned to the woman by his side, reaching out a tender hand to touch her

“Are you alright, my dear? You _look a little pale…”_ He enquires kindly, his voice full of concern.

Thomas’s eyes burn into her skin, as he looked upon the hand the man went to touch. It was her left, and it held his hand as he reached over in concern. _And there sat a single jewelled ring on her fourth finger…_

_So, the rumours were true…_

“I’m fine. _Really_ , I just…” She smiles, flippantly. Her blood prickling uncomfortably at her skin.

“Miss James has not seen me in a few _, long,_ years. Our reunion was not planned. It _was bound_ to be somewhat a _shock…_ ” Thomas explains the people stood around them with that _easy going,_ handsome smile.

The very one she’d fallen prone too… _The same, devastating, deceiving one that promised heaven and instead had brought her hell…_

“Forgive me for my _cruel, little trick_. My sweet..” He flatters to her.

The ladies about them blushed and swooned at his gazing upon them. The males were equally as intrigued. There was not _a single_ living creature he couldn’t enchant, and beguile. That was the boundless danger of Sir Thomas Sharpe… _He was always so winningly convincing…_

“If I may be so bold. Are you engaged for the next dance, _Miss?”_ He asks her, kindly. “If your, _fiancé,_ can spare you?” He adds, and the way he said that word, made her stomach twist and curl up like a dead leaf, in her torso.

“I _am not_ , Sir.”

 She eludes, meeting his eyes again. Their effect on her nonetheless potent as before. _She burned. She pined. She perished._ He made her feel diminutive, and apprehensive under such a gaze, which shouted volumes, but said little.

“Well, _then…_ May I have _the honour?"_

He concludes, stepping closer and holding out his hand. He stared her down as she looked at the pale, long fingered palm of the hand she had held, and which had held her, many times before. When she reached out and her skin touched his, cold, dreadful waves of shock wracked through her body. His touch sent back all those terrible memories she buried, deep down. The ones she hoped would _never_ come to light again.

She wet her lips, nervously, as his fingers wrapped around her small hand. His grip was gentle, as it always was. But suddenly the ring on her finger felt like a lead weight. It _was all_ she could do to hold her hand up.

“I’ll be sure to return the lady to your side when _I’m done_ with _her…_ ”

Thomas leered to Henry. He watched her cringe at the more salacious meaning of that comment, He leads her away, his eyes watching as she remained as stiff as a statue as he linked her hand to his arm. They made their way slowly to the ballroom, through the double doors, coming to the large, cleared space that was inhabited by the arcing, sweeping couples that were currently dancing a polka.

They walked, in silence, along the edge of the room. She knew he was keeping quiet so as to rile her. To _tease_ her, make her wait, fidgeting and squirming, in anticipation of when he did speak. He liked to do that to her. _He liked toying with his belongings…_

They walked on further, still not having said _a word_ between them. But she notices he was not leading her to the dance floor. His touch turned to a grip, and he pulls her aside into a darkened corridor. Quickly leading her away, and pressing her against the dark wall of a parlour that wasn’t in use. Lit silver and blue from the moons light that flooded the carpets from the open window. She could still hear the noise of the music, and the din of chatter. But now she could only let terror overtake her, and focus on naught but him. His tall frame caged her body to the wall, and those bright eyes carve hotly into her. Under their gaze, she shrinks. Terrified of what was to come.

“ _Well, well_. Mrs Sharpe. _Oh, Your_ maiden name is _awfully fetching_ , but not quite as nice as your married one. Do you _not agree?._ Seems you _didn’t intend_ on running into _me_ , this evening, _did you?”_ He purrs lowly at her.

“I _am not_ married _to you_. We _divorced._ ” She growls back.

“We divorced _at gunpoint_ , at _your_ doing. _Dear._ ” He snarls.

“I couldn’t stay in that _rotting, festering_ house for _one more_ day. Getting the cold shoulder, from you, and nothing but _contempt_ and covetousness from your sister…” She explains.

“You _used me_ , for my _money._ _And don’t dare pretend you didn’t._ You used me for _what you_ wanted, and once you had it, you then _ignored_ me. I was passed over by my own husband. Given the cold shoulder every time I _came near_ you…” She shook her head trailing off, looking up at him as he watched her angrily.

“Maybe I _am guilty_ of not paying you attention. But I am _not the one_ , who separated us…I never wanted _that.”_ He elucidated.

“Maybe not. But _you lost_ me, all the same.” She stated. Then her mind turned to other things…

“…Are _you alone_ here, tonight? I didn’t _see_ your sister anywhere..” She adds.

“Lucille is  _dead_.” He snaps lowly.

Her mouth gaped, she had never thought that he would be so unburdened by the pain of loosing a sibling who was more than a twin to him. Even if he never admitted so.

“ _When?”_ She asks.

“Barely _two day’s_ after you left. _Overwrought with grief_ , she threw herself off the landing.” He tells her viciously.

“Are _you blaming me?”_ She asks with horror.

“We _both_ …. Felt _your loss_ keenly..”

He tells her, brining a gentle hand up, to cup the side of her neck, caressing her like he always used too. That’s what was _the painful_ part about their love. He’d touch her, stroke her lovingly, make her feel beloved, and alive, and then just leave her. Wanting more, which he _would never_ be prepared to give.

“I am sorry, about Lucille. But as you can see. _There is nothing_ for _you here_ … I am _engage_ d, to Henry St. Clair. I _love him_ to distraction, and _I will_ marry him next month…” She promises.

He sneers down at her.

“I was wondering _which one_ of us would bring, _him,_ up first.” Thomas seethes.

“Don’t _you dare_ , Thomas…” She warns.

“I won’t give you up, so easily. Now that I’ve lost _all_ I hold dear…”

“I wouldn’t say _you’ve nothing_. Aren’t you the self made, millionaire, inventor now?” She asks him. “Can’t you go and _find another_ , madly enamoured, _weak_ , woman _to trap_ into marriage?…” She digs at him.

“I don’t _want_ anyone else. I want _my wife back_ …” He informs her.

“You _cannot_ have her..” She finalises.

The sneer that overtakes his face was both terrifying, and handsome all in one, dreadful, smirk.

“ _Oh,_ I’ll have her.”

He pledges. Then he leans close, his lips ghosting over her neck, drifting up across her ear, both tickling her, and delighting her all at once. Making her breath stutter, and her heart pound around her ribcage like a trapped beast, yearning to get loose. His hands move from pressing to the wall, either side of her hips, to slither round her back, tugging her waist closer to crush into his chest. He had always adored how slight, and frail she was under his touch. His hand lay flat, slipping temptingly up her back, as his mouth found a place to rest, kissing the side of her neck, adoring how she went stock still, rasping his name, hating how he made lust drown her reasonably senses _so easily._

“ _I hate you_ … _God help me_ , _You can’t do this, Thomas. You made me miserable, you  tortured me, by ignoring me, you made me cry, ache, and suffer for you. And now you’re here, saying you want me, and I hate you for it._.”

She cries out in a whisper, Squeezing her eyes shut, as tears dribbled down her flushed cheeks. She tilts her head to the side, in time to feel his teeth sink into the divine column of her neck, making her moan aloud into the darkness as he wrapped himself around her.

 _“Such feeble words,_ darling... You’ll forgive me if I doubt their validity when your body _so thoroughly_ contradicts the fact of _your hating me…”_

She wriggled, but he waylaid her protests as he held her closer, clutched her tighter, and edged the strap of her gown to slide a little lower. Exposing further, the tops of her breasts, which heaved with her every, ragged, hot breath. His lips travel south, kissing the perfectly soft mounds of her chest, she can’t deny that the scrape of his shaven chin was a welcome, and thoroughly erotic one.

“Does _Henry know_ , that you’re _not, a virtuous_ , woman?”

 He asks her, his hand finding the stretch of her supple thigh through the layers of her skirts. Bending it up so the space he created better allowed his body to more fully insert itself in the gap between her legs.

“Does he know _you’ve lain_ _with me?_ Taken your pleasure in my arms _more than once?_ Cried out my name in the dead of night, as I slid between your thighs and _lapped_ at your _beautiful sex?”_ He whispers into her ear, kissing down her jaw.

“Would _he still marry_ you, knowing that you’ve been prostrate under me… _Naked_ , in my embrace, purring my name, _begging me_ for more. To sate _that lust that I inspired_ in you. Would _he take_ you _then?_ Or has _he already, my love?_ Have you let him gain access under your skirts? Does he make you _climax as hard_ as I _surely_ can?”

“ _Thomas_ …” She pants.

“Is he _a good_ lover?” He probes further.

 _“Stop it…”_ She spits out in a harsh whisper.

“Do you _still hate me now?_ _My love?”_ He rasps.

“ _Yes!_ ” She wheezes. “ _Yes_. I _do-mmnf_ ”

He interrupts whatever else she had been about to say. His mouth presses quickly, but softly to her own and she whimpers into the kiss, her hands clawing at his shoulders, but he held her firm where she was. Engulfed in his arms, his lips twisting onto her own to silence her, and to awaken that passion he knew lie deep within, for him, and him alone. His carnal lust takes over him. He doesn’t become any _the gentler_ , her forces her lithe form up into his hold, further up the wall, his arousal heightening as she raked one hand through his inky hair, trying either to tug him closer, or push him away. He _can’t be sure_ of her motive…

When she breaks the kiss, he can’t take it, he needs more. He mouths embraces down her neck, sucking her pale skin, marking her with his teeth. _Let that fool, Henry, see what a real man was capable of doing to his woman._

 _“I have to go…_ Henry’s waiting for me…” She pleads. “ _Thomas_. _You have_ to let me go..” She whines. But for some reason. She _cannot_ make her body move. The treacherous thing it was, didn’t want to leave him. Didn’t even want to consider moving away from him, and his hypnotic embrace that made her melt. _No kiss from Henry had ever done that to her._

“I don’t _ever want_ to let you go…” He snarls into her ear. “I’ve lost you once. And _I never will_ again.” He huffs harshly.

Reluctantly, he pulls his body from hers, and see’s her sag, flushed and eyes bright with lust, against the wall. Holding herself there, before her wobbling knees gave way.

 _“I mean it…”_ He rasps, leering down at her, his eyes narrow. Almost glaring as she could see the primitive, _wild_ , lust in his eyes, and feel his breath furnace against her cheeks.

“ _Go back to him_. But I _promise you this_ , my love. You will be _mine_ once more… I’m _not loosing_ you to Henry St. Clair. It would be a fools errand to think a mere engagement ring _will stop me_ …”

He pledges, and before she can say another word, he slips out of the door, and away into the crowds of the party. She regains her breath, and fixes her appearance. She returns once again to her fiancé's side. Knowing that Thomas was too stubborn, and honour bound to his promises, to let her go without first putting up a _mighty fight._

 

_~_

 

 


	2. Unknown Threats and Dark Pasts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; The Closest - Kauf

 

 

~

 

She didn’t say a word after she returned to his side.

Not for the rest of the ball, not as they got their coats, and waited for the carriage. Not in the carriage, slowly heading home through the gas-lit, cobbled, midnight streets of London. Henry watches her, sat there, her eyes unfocused, dazed, as she stared at her folded hands in her lap. Doing little else. He surveyed the way the light striped across her face, before fading to darkness again. Apart from her body jolting with the movement of the carriage, she was as still as a pale, marble statue. He looses count of the times he asks her if she is alright. She replied every time with a silent nod.

She doesn’t even speak when they get back to her modest townhouse, in Fitzrovia, on great Russell Street. They walk up the steps, and through the front door in silence. Slip off their coats, and hand them to her maid, Jeanie. They both walk into the front parlour, where the only light comes from the fire, blazing hot and red gold in the hearth, warming the room.

She takes a seat on the settee adjacent to the fire, and stares into the flames ahead of her. Still having not said a thing. Just transfixed. Her mind was clearly on other things. So much so, she doesn’t even notice him pass her a small glass of port, that he’d poured from the side table. Because _damn it all,_ she obviously had something to tell him regarding Sharpe, and he had a feeling a drink would be needed to take the edge off _such news._

 _“Vianne?”_ He says, a little louder than he intended. But it seems to work in snapping her out of her blank faced, vacancy. Her pale eyes looked up and focused on him for the first time _all evening_ , since Sharpe’s sudden claim on haunting her attention.

“ _Oh_.” She gapes, blinking, startled like a weak animal caught out in the open by a predator, “Thankyou.” She whispers, taking the glass from his outstretched, offering hand. Plucking it from his grasp, and settling it in the slope of her blue silk, lap.

He settled down in the armchair opposite her, in attempts to force more eye contact from her

“…I know you have secrets, Vianne. _And maybe_ they are the sort of secrets that _every woman_ has a right to have. I don’t deny that. But I think there is _something_ you’ve kept hidden about Thomas Sharpe. And as your fiancé, I think you _need_ to tell me _what that is…”_ He tells her gently, but firmly.

She shut her eyes in shame and guilt. _Henry sharp as a tack, of course he would know there was something she wasn’t saying. He_ had _seen_ how the man’s sudden apparation had scuppered her this evening, and if he had managed not to notice it, then he was a blind, callous, fool. And he was _never capable_ of being those.

She doesn’t meet his eyes, she stares down at the dark scarlet port in her glass. And when she speaks, it is so hushed, he almost doesn’t hear her.

“Do you _love me_ , Henry?” She enquires in a small, shattered voice. She peers up, to see his head tilted at her, and he looked at her with affectionate mercy.

“… Of _course_ I do.” He offers. She nods gently, wetting her lips, and swallowing nervously. Her other tell when she was nervous, was the way her spare hand fidgeted, rubbing her middle and index finger against her thumb. That was her anxious tick, he’d seen her do it many a time.

“Please, could you…. _Bare that_ in mind, _for me?”_ She asks. He frowns in bewilderement, baffled as to where she was leading him.

“ _Why?_ ” He probes, the frown still weighing heavily on his brow.

“Because _after_ I tell you, you might _not_ love me _any longer..”_ She warns him. Trying her best to blink back the spearing, daggering hot tears that pricked at her eyes.

“ _Vee_ , now your making _me worried_. What _is it?”_ He asked her in a low tone, his voice quick and fretful.

“I _have been_ married before, Henry. To Thomas Sharpe…” She tells, letting the words linger in the air.

After months of keeping the secret under lock and key, finally letting it loose, made her feel _worse_ than ever. It didn’t _lighten_ her burden, it made her feel all the _more rotten_ for keeping it caged up for so long. When she looked up to meet his eyes, she could see they were dark, and that frown still burrowed down on his brow. She watches him shake his head, unable to comprehend what she was telling him. His brain didn’t know which question to spit out of his mouth first. _How? Where? When? For how long? Why? How did it end?_ He decided to opt for the latter of his limitless string of requests flitting through his head. She could hear the words relaying, ringing in the silence around them. Echoing out into the fading hush, only accompanied by the crackle and spit of the fire beside them.

“Are you, _still_ , married to him?” He asks her. Because abandonment of a spouse was considered as bad as _a crime_. And seperation would _have ruined_ her. She would have been shunned and outcast from all decent society in London.

He couldn’t imagine Vianne, the sweet, gentle, docile natured woman, walking out on someone she had pledged her life, body, fidelity and soul too. _But clearly he didn’t really know her at all…_ This news hit him with all the grace and poise of a grand piano falling onto his head. He expected a past dalliance, or some sordid kiss in the dark corner of a ballroom while no one was looking. _Not a ruined marriage match…_

“ _No._ No, _I,_ at great cost, obtained _a divorce_ , and I _ran away_.” She told him, too ashamed to meet his eyes.

 _“How?”_ He asked. Now his interuptions were _hard_ , not considerate, and he harshly bit out his words. The truth would come _cascading_ out of her now. He wanted every _single, spec_ of it. He wanted every sordid, last, little, detail of her shocking betrayal to him.

“My Uncle Hector, the one you met, is a lawyer. One of the _best, most expensive_ lawyers in London. He raised me after I was, as you know, Orphaned at the age of five. Hector’s the _only family_ I have left in the world. And… _He helped me_. Helped me forge the papers to go through the courts. His friend is a high court judge, so he was able to procure _a quiet_ ruling for fear of scandal. We lied and said I was too shaken and ill to attend a lengthy trial. He paid a witness _to pretend_ , to pose as my husband, and I filed for divorce on the grounds of _adultery_ , and.. _violence.”_ She explains, trying to reign in her tears, but she feared it was a redundant use of effort.  They overflowed, and sprung down her cheeks all the same.

“He _hurt you?”_ He asks, irately

“Not _outright_. He.. never seemed to have the _time of day_ for having a wife. His inventions and tinkering took up _far more_ of his time. His _sister_ , however... She wasn’t.. _well._ She was very, _strange_ , toward me. She could be docile, one moment, almost nurturing, and the next, she could be.. _outraged._ She beheld the most odd _fascination_ with me. It almost felt sometimes that she held a _great affection_ for me. Always wanting to brush my hair, or help me get dressed…” She told him.

As she did, memories of Lucille came back, _haunting_ , her mind, made her feel how she had felt when she was around the woman all those months ago. Nervous and guarded. She employed her second nervous tick, but this time for a far _more dark_ reason. She reached up to scratch idly at the back of her pale neck. Where sat the long, thin, pale scar that had faded now.

She couldn’t bare to tell Henry that she once woke up, one night, at Allerdale, in hers and Thomas’s bed. And Lucille was there, looming over her as she slept. Stood there in her nightgown like a pale ghost. Pressing a carving knife down upon Vianne's neck, slightly drawing blood, as the hand that didn’t hold the knife, struggled to choke her, but not quite suceeding. She could _never forget_ the _expression_ the woman had on her face. She was crying streams and streams of tears, yet she had never looked _more_ tormented.

_She had looked then like a soul twisting and writhing in hell._

Vianne tried to scream, but she could only gasp and grab at the woman’s arm. Panting and fearing for her life, she must have fainted or slipped away into blackness for a while, because next thing she knew, the sting of the cold knife left her throat, and Thomas was there, shaking her awake, stroking her face, and caressing her hair, murmering her name in a frenzy to get her to wake up, and trying madly to stem the blood that dripped heavily from the side of her throat onto the snowy pillows below her. She’d lost _a lot_ of blood, and was rendered weak as a result. But, come the next morning, walking down to the kitchens, Thomas helping her along all the way, and Lucille was sat at the dining table, smiling sweetly at her as if nothing in the world had happened the night before. Vianne had slept with the door locked for weeks afterwards out of precaution.

“Sounds like she was, _in love_ , with you _or something.._ ” Henry spoke, bringing her back into the room, and not dragged away into the dark recesses of distressing memories in her head.

“It’s anyones guess. I suppose. We’ll _never know_ now, Thomas told me tonight that she had died. And though her presence did, _unsettle me_ , I am sorry to hear of her passing. She was… _a troubled_ soul.” Vianne shrugged, shaking her head in bewilderment. _In more ways than was admitable… years of toiling away in that decaying, bloodied, gloomy house, was enough to drive anyone mad…_

“So he’s back in London now, what does _he want_ from _you?_ ” Henry asks.

Vianne looked over at him, and that said everything. Henry slammed his glass down on the side table next to him.

“You _can’t be serious?”_ He fairly shouts. “He has come _all the way_ back here, _for you?”_ He asks loudly.

“Henry _, Please_..” She blinks in an even, calm tone. She stands and goes to kneel in front of him, placing her hands over his as he sat there looking incensed and peturbed. She found his hands,and squeezed them tight.

“ _Please look_ at me, _darling_ …” She asks. Watching him raise his head, his jaw gritted tight in his anger as he glared a little at her.

“I didn’t expect to see him again, not tonight, and not ever. Perhaps that _was naive_ of me. I ran away from him, Henry, I think he just wants to _seek out_ why. Now you listen, I am in no danger, from him. _Do you understand_? _I love you._ I was married to him, but, it was born out of a _stupid, childish_ attraction that I let get the better of me. I don’t think _we ever, truly_ , loved one another. Certainly not in the way I love you. _I am sorry_ I didn’t tell you. But, being married to him, was one of the _darkest, most miserable_ chapters of my life. _But you_ , my love, are my brightest. _I am sorry.”_ She spoke solemly. Hoping her words conveyed _how she felt_ about him. Even though she had _lied._

She knew _full well_ why Thomas was back, inserting himself into her life. _He was here because he had lost the only family he had, and now he wanted her back_ , and he had made it _perfectly clear_ he would brook _no opposition_ in having her as his wife once more. _Again, she had to lie to Henry_ , and she felt sullied, and dirty for it. But if they _could just make_ it to the altar, and become man and wife, then maybe, _just maybe_ , he would leave her alone for good. And see that she just  _wasn’t_ the woman for him….

Henry looked down at her, not speaking. _Just looking_.

Looking at the pale eyes, and the beautiful, finely sculpted, delicate face that was peering up at him, with hope, love and longing in those cobalt eyes he had fallen head over heels for since he first saw them look at him. He sighs, letting a smile widen his mouth, before he leans down, and gathers his fianceé in his arms. Bringing her up into his lap, tucking an arm around her back, and letting her legs fold over his right knee, curling her up into him, as she slung her arms around his neck. Nuzzling into his throat, shutting her eyes as she inhaled his cologne. The essence of his scent. _Her Henry._ She put thoughts of her ex-husband out of her mind, Those piercing, ice chip, eyes, the raw trail of his scar that looked like he was _weeping blood._ She let Henry’s solid comfort, and nearness wash those thoughts away. Putting aisde how his gaze was burned deep into her mind, like _a brand_.

His free hand sought out her own, and brought her left hand up into his sight, his fingertip stroking over the large, fat cluster of sapphires and diamonds that sat on the golden band. His finger lovingly touching the smooth, skinny finger of hers. Looking at the slender, beauty of her hands. Her caring, nuturing hands. The hand that, come next month, would bare another ring marking _her as his wife_.

“I _can’t wait_ to be married to you. Vianne Earnest-James… I _can’t wait_ to be your husband. Come home to you at the end of each day…” He smiles, leaning his head to rest against hers as they both surveyed her engagement ring.

She smiled, before her fingers sought his, and thread through them. The all male, soft, large hand that dwarfed her own in it’s size and grip.

“I know it was a part of your life you’d rather _not relive_ , and I know I _cannot understand_ the pain of having such a past. But you should have told me. My dear. If we’re to be married, then I want there to be _no secret’s_ between us. _No little thing that we don’t share.”_ He tells her.

“I can’t pretend I wasn’t worried that _you’d decide to break_ it off if you knew _the truth…”_ She tells him.

“I _was shocked._ I won’t admit _I wasn’t_. But the way I see it, in my calculative, clinical way, is that you left a marriage that threatened your happiness, and would have, perhaps in time, even threatened _your life_. I would have to be a _foul monster of the worst sort_ to be angry at you for _such a thing_. As it stands, my anger is now reserved entirely  for _that wastrel_ who ignored you when he had you, and now decides he wants to come crashing into your life, and claim _you back again_ …” He spoke evenly, but at the mention of Thomas. His tone turned venemous.

“I _watched him_ , Vianne, He didn’t take _his eyes off you_ not for even _a second tonight_. I’m worried what he’ll resort to, to try and _win you over_ …” He spoke in a small, fearful worry.

“He _won’t claim_ me. I’m already _yours._ Henry. I was promised to you from _the day_ you slipped this ring on my finger…” She explained. She cupped his head in her hands, and turned to touch their foreheads together. Grounding him from the anger that seized him.

“Promise me you _won’t see him_ again?” He asks of her.

“I sware, I _shall not_ see Thomas Sharpe again. My love.” She agrees. Hating how a small part of her detested being told what she should, or should not do by him.

And another small part of her - _the treacherous part_ \- she could feel, _felt saddened_ when she thought of never seeing him again. She’d forgotten, after running away from him, how hypnotic he was. How his touch _set her alight, made her ache_.

But she could not bring back memories of him, without thinking of all the anger, shame and deceit he knowingly inflicted on her. _Using her_ for her money. Tricking her into a marriage of convenience. Although, she’d bitterly congratulate Lucille on having _such a clever handle_ on their situation. She may have appeared the innocent, spinster sibling, but there was far more to her than met the eye. She had Thomas wrapped around her little finger, and she used him like her _own dancing puppet_ as a consequence. She knew the Sharpes had chosen her because she was, a rich heiress, orphaned, and _utterly alone_ in the world. A fortune hunters dream. _She wouldn’t be missed_. A dark, handsome stranger cooing promises of love into her ear in the shadows of a ballroom was bound to win over someone who felt like they had _nothing_ in the world. All that money, but no one to love and share it with.

Lucille was far _too wily_ to let her brother not win her heart. He made Vianne feel like he _came alive_ when he was with her. They went on a picnic in Russell Square, and got caught in the rain, so he gallantly offered her his coat. And when he returned her home, she was too polite to send him away shivering, in the pouring rain. She invited him in, and offered him clothes and a hot drink. They shared a passionate, body melting, embrace, sat by the fireplace she was now sat by with Henry. The next time he courted her, they went to the national portrait gallery. And he spent more time observing _her_ , and praising _her_ beauty, rather than any of the artworks on display in front of them. _She could see now,_ how his deception _was so well weilded._ Crafted by Lucille, and implemented by him. For nothing but greed of money. He showed no care for her own, silly, heart getting involved in his lies. 

 _That was the thing that hurt worst of all._ He could smile, laugh, and kiss her so passionately, then forget he ever held any regard. _She envied him_. She wished she could forget it…. but as it is, it is what _plagues her, keeps her awake_ at night.

The one saving grace from her perils, was that she hadn’t told Thomas or Lucille about her Uncle. She had lied and told them she was an orphan. They had eloped to Cumbria, as it was. So she hadn’t felt the need. But as it slowly became apparent that as her marriage was turning sourer and sourer by the day, her lying about Hector turned out to be the very thing that would _save her._ And the fact that she left her house, and half of her money in her uncle's name. The rest, she signed over to Thomas when she took his last name to become Mrs Sharpe. And when she ran away, she let him have it. _All of it_. She wasn’t a materialistic woman. If money would keep her from being killed, _then so be it_. She wouldn’t loose sleep over having bought her own life in order to keep it safe.

“I’d better leave. If you stay in my arm much longer, my dear, I won’t be able to _contain myself_ until the wedding night…” Henry leers wickedly, smiling a kiss into her neck.

She grins, before sliding off him, and easing her feet back down onto the floor. She watches him come to a stand. Fixing his jacket, and his stiff lapels, he had unknotted the white bow tie around his neck when he sat to take a drink.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Afternoon tea at the Ritz? Wasn’t it? I should _be along_ after my morning clinic…” Henry offered. As he stood and leaned close to embrace her.

Maybe that’s why she chose him. He was the _polar opposite_ of the ex-husbands personality. He was warm, and kind, and always paid her attention and catered to her affections. Didn’t give her the cold shoulder, or disinterested bouts of silence as Thomas had. Henry made her laugh, kissed her hand when they walked arm in arm. He brought her flowers, and listened to her when he spoke. He was a doctor, and that fact shone through in his manner. He cared for other people. Whereas Thomas was a money grabbing bachelor who only wished to look after himself, and his twin. His affections stopped there.

“I’ll see you at noon for tea. Doctor St. Clair..” She smiles widely, leaning up to kiss him.

She rang for Jeanie, who reappeared with his coat and top hat. He pulled them on, and bid his goodbyes. Vianne stood at her front door, kissing him once more, watching him walk off into the fog of the night. The chill of the cool air brushing along her skin as she watched her beau dissapear round the street corner, off out of sight. The misty night swallowing him up.

She could only hope she had done the right thing in choosing him, she thought idly to herself. As she stood watching the dark street. She looked up at the murky fog of the moons light that was barely visible through the oncoming smog. Even so, a dark shape opposite caught her eye. She looked to see a tall, dark figure, turn and scurry down a dark alley, returning back into the shadows, almost blending in, as one, with the darkness.

Vianne felt chills prickle at her skin anew, trickling like ice down her spine in terror. She shut the door and pressed her back to it. _She felt like she used to feel_ , back at Allerdale. Like she was permanantly _being watched_ , by an _unknown_ pair of eyes…

 

~

 

 

 


	3. Impromptu Tea Parties and Furious Fiancé's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Chopin, Op. 28. No.4 in E Minor

 

 

~

 

Walking into the Ritz hotel the next afternoon, made Vianne feel like her old self again. Seeing the familiar gilded walls, sparkling chandeliers, and baroque patterned, immaculate carpets stretch out along the white walled, elegant corridoors, made her think back past the previous two days, of how she _used_ to be. Before her hurricane of a dashing ex-husband had strolled back into her life, and tainted her every _thought_ , and every _second_. She was terrified she’d bump into him somewhere, or see him, catch his eye, across the street. It was an unsettling feeling, the fear of knowing he _was here_ , _in London_ , _somewhere, lurking_ , making her constantly feel like she was watching over her shoulder. But, for this afternoon, as she strode through the tasteful halls of the Ritz hotel, worries of Thomas Sharpe melted away.

She breezed through the sophisticated halls, the porter, Benton, whom she knew well, leading her to the tea room. Though she knew the way, she’d met Henry here many times for dinner, it was within walking distance from the Royal London Hospital. It was often a convenient meeting place for them to meet in the middle, as it were. She was, unlike other ladies of her class and rank, a working woman. She was an assistant to a Dr. Harriden, a lecturer at the Royal Society of Medicine, she volunteered her time helping there at the charity hospital when and where she could. She took notes, gave help in his lectures and assisted him in his controversial medical papers and journals. She enjoyed her work, it gave her day purpose. Or else she would suffer the extreme perils of a life confined to balllrooms, paying calls, taking tea and attending closely the frivolous fashion for new gowns.

She is led to the bright, high ceilinged atrium of the bustling, busy tea room. Weaving her way through the numerous tables, the warm, comforting aroma of cakes, fresh flowers passing her by as she is escorted to her and Henry’s usual table.

“Not _all_ of your table companions have yet arrived, Miss James.” The porter informs her politely as they stroll along. She frowned lightly, Henry had said it would only be the two of them. “Did Mr St. Clair say _who else_ would be joining us, Benton?” She asked him. He gave a stoic response, as he always did. Typical Benton. “Miss Rosamund Price, Miss James. She sent word ahead that _you wouldn’t mind_.” He tells.

Vianne fights not to roll her eyes on _hearing that_. Rosamund Price was a debutante she had become close with, as they debuted in society the same year. She was unwed, still, much to her parents distress. But something about the woman let Vianne know she wasn’t exactly, _unburdened_ , from male company. She had a heart shaped face, pouting pink lips, hair the colour of honey, and a cheeky, spoilt countenance that awarded her instant popularity with all the airheaded, vain, heiresses in London. Rosamund Price was their pampered, chic and conceited, _Queen Bee._ Nonetheless, Vianne did admire her ability to lead a guilt free, pleasure filled life, but she couldn’t find such pleasure, as her friend did, for cruel gossip mongering, and the thrill of wearing the latest, most expensive gown in all of London.

It was then she realised Benton was not leading them to her customary table.

“Benton, Did Mr St. Clair not reserve our _usual_ table?” She enquired. He walked round the back of the room, to the more, private furnished tables and booths. Away from the bustle and business of the the numerous square, white, linen covered, tables that swarmed the main part of the room.

Vianne was about to ask why, when Benton turns and sweeps his arm in the air, presenting her with the round, elegantly laid table, flanked by a settee and two armchairs. “One of your dining companions requested _a move_ from your traditional table, Miss.” He uttered. She noted with horror, that one of them was already filled, they sat with their back to her. But she would recognise that dark, onyx mane, _anywhere._

 _She was learning how true to his word he was._ There was _no escaping_ Sir Thomas Sharpe once he’d set his mind on her.

Vianne watching as she stood, and swung round to face her, imacculately dressed, all black, a velvet jacket, white shirt, and scarlet cravat with a diamond pin. A silver watch fob in his pocket, the chain linked across his front. His hair was brushed back from his handsome, smirking face. His eyes didn’t hide their sly humour at the situation. How she stood, now narrowing her eyes at him. Giving him a glare that told him she was agitated and mortified by his underhanded plotting. She wanted to storm out, to turn her back and stride away angrily. But to do so would be the height of rudeness, and would most likey cause a scene amongst all the fashionable members of society crowded into the room behind her.

“Mr Sharpe suggested that as you were _acquainted_ , that you might enjoy joining him this afternoon to take tea...” Benton explained. Vianne saw that this made Thomas smirk, and his long fingered hand reached into his waistcoat pocket, and he withdrew a folded bank note, and pressed it into Benton’s hand.

“I thank _you dearly_ for your _assistance,_ Benton.” Thomas leered at the man. Who bowed, and bid them both a good afternoon before he left them alone. Vianne looked to the floor as he left, and when she looked up, Thomas was staring at her with beguiled fascination lighting up his blue eyes. The garnet hued scar crinkled on his pale face when he smiled.

“May I help you to _your seat_ , darling?” He asks her keenly. Enjoying how his smirk visibly set her teeth on edge.

“You’re _infuriating…_ ” Vianne glowered lowly at him. Seeing as she and he both knew she had _no other choice_ but to stay and be polite to this _foul_ man. She stepped closer, turning her back to him in a way that made her very uncomfortable.

He swept behind her, close enough for her to feel his breath on the back of her neck, as he did the courteous thing and pulled the chair out for her to sit in. Her spine shivered, and her knees wobbled as he tilted his head even closer, far closer than was appropriate, so his lips almost brushed her ear, the nearness of his lips to her persons made her tremble In ways _she’d never have_ willingly admitted too. So much so, she forgot to bend her knees and lower herself into the cradle of the seat. She could feel his sneer as he whispered in her ear.

“ _Aren’t you going to sit, Anne?”_ He asks her condescendingly. Mocking her behavior around him, and the way he said her name made her flinch. The abundant pleasure he took in purring her name like she was his sweet little possession made her blood chill.

She plonks herself down quickly, not to mention gracelessly, into the seat, untucking her skirts as she settled, watching him circle her, slowly, as he stalked back to his own seat directly opposite. Easing himself down like a luxuriously confident emperor. Folding his long legs off to one side, and relaxing back In his own chair. His eyes flitting over her figure as she sat there, straight backed, demure, and seething at his subterfuge. Today, Thomas delighted to find she’d dressed her delectable body in a gown of scarlet velvet, with a small, navy and red decorated top hat perched on her coiled copper hair. Her gown was stitched with gold accents, swirling high up her collar, he could better make out her slender waist, and her ample breasts under the strict corset she wore to enhance her fine figure.

Before he made a show of decieving her, here today, she could hear the din of the tearoom behind her, the tinkling of Chopin’s, etude opera 25, number one, coming from the 1837 Allison Grand in the far corner, adding that extra aura of class and relaxation. The gentle clatter of cutlery hitting porclain plates, and the clinking of teacups. The chatter and mumble of the dining room buzzed throughout the room lowly. Yet when she looked at him, _now, she heard none of it._ Now she could only let herself get transfixed by the startling, piercing gaze of the pair of eyes that haunted her dreams.

He smiled across to her, one elbow resting on the table, his chin resting on his thumb, and his index finger curled up against his lips.

“You shouldn’t _be here_ , Thomas. This is the height of rudeness. I promised Henry I’d _keep away_ from you at all costs. And _how on earth_ did you find out I would be _having tea here today?”_ She interrogates, her face sharp and trying to be adorably stern. It didn’t have her intended effect of punishing him. _It rather made him smile all the more…_

“Your fiancé wanted you to keep _away from me?_ How _very Passé_ of him… What next? Does he wish to duel me on the lawn, at dusk, with sabres, for _besmirching_ your honour?” Thomas smiles.

“Don’t be sarcastic when I’m trying to _forewarn you. Thomas_. If Henry see’s you here, _he’ll hit the_ ceiling…” She snaps gently. He could see worry linger, mingled with panic, in her eyes.

“I can hold my own against the handsome, tall and brute force _of Dr. St Clair_. Darling.” He tells her.

“Now you’re just being _cruel._ You know If he see’s us, he’ll supsect _partiality_ on my part, and he’ll strangle you for trying to _pursue me._ Out of the two of us, I _have more_ to lose by your being here..” She admits desperately.

“Partiality to your ex-husband, why _how dare_ you have eyes for any man other than he, the powerful, kind, Doctor…” He mocks.

Vianne glares at him. But not horridly, in a way that lets him know what suffering and damage he could be inflicting on her enagement - not that he cared of course - _that was his intention._

“Wild dogs _couldn’t chase me away_. We are sat _metres_ apart, opposite sides of a table, having afternoon tea in a room full of influential, rich people. It’s not as if we’re _ravishing_ each other right here on the table top… _like we have done before..”_ He adds in a sly, afterthought that got her pale skin blushing so very easily.

“… If your dear fiancé can find any _scandalous_ intent when we are sat apart, drinking tea, in this current situation we are in, then that is _his_ shameful prejudiced mistake, _not ours_ …” Thomas explains.

Vianne eyes him cautiously, reaching for the tepot, and pouring it. She poured herself a cup, and looked across at his handsome smirking face.

“Still earl grey with lemon?” She asks him. Reaching for the second teapot on the table. His smile causes her cheeks to heat up, and her eyes wrinkled at the sides, as he saw she actually, smiled, at his answer. _It was fleeting_ , but _a smile it was_ nonetheless.

“Well remembered, _Anne_ …” He purrs, his eyes softening their knife like edge. She hands him the dainty cup, swallowing with apprehension as their fingertips meet, and brush against one another. She blushed, because his eyes still held the propensity to make her swoon, and he always called her Anne. _His Anne_. _His darling wife…_

She sipped her tea, awkwardly trying to think of a topic of conversation that wasn't linked to the elephant in the room – _their failed marriage_.

“How _did_ you get the scar?” She asks in a low, little voice. Because when her eyes focused on it again, she couldn’t help the question tumbling out from her lips.

“Lucilles _parting gift,_ before she… ended her life.” He answered, equally as softly.

“ _Good god_.” Vianne empathised, her face that lovely, doe-like expression of innocence and awe. The one that was uniquely Vianne. He seemed amused by her exclaimation.

“It stopped hurting, a long while ago. Loosing you, however. I don’t think I’ll ever be over the _pain_ of that…” He explains quietly.

“Let’s not do _this now_ , Thomas. _Not here_.” She begs of him. “ _This isn’t_ the time and place to discuss _such things_.” She tells. Peering around her nervously. Wondering if anyone had overheard them. As it was, luckily, there was no living creature within earshot.

“Well, _if,_ as you say, Henry will not be letting _you near me_ at any point in the immediate future. I may not have another chance as _to why_ you ran away…” He asks her, his voice was low and he leaned forwards to better concentrate on her.

“You and me both know _why I ran._ Thomas. You had _no need_ for a wife, but for the money. You had Lucille for _everything else._ For the lust, the comfort and the guidance.” She explains sadly. 

“I gave up on our marriage. Because you gave me _no indication_ that you even wanted me for a wife. You made me fall in love, then you left me, _bare, vulnerable and alone._ You let Lucille run every, little thing. You _never stood up_ to her, Thomas. You let her _hurt_ me, and _poison_ me, and be oddly _obsessed_ with me. I ran, _because I was scared and I knew you_ wouldn’t follow. And I certainly didn’t think you’d _care. Not while you had her.”_ She barks out before she could stop herself.

Thomas eased back in his seat. After having listened to her emotionally driven outburst. He never knew _that_ was why she ran, It was both enlightening and terrible all at once. He _wasn't_ aware she knew about him and Lucille. She never gave him any indication.

“I never knew you left because you _weren’t happy_. I thought it was because of… how _she hurt_ you.” He told. “I had no idea it was…”

“I was scared. She hurt me, terrified me. And you were _never around_ to stop her. That _is why I left.”_ She told him. That seemed to wipe the smugness from his face. She watched him, his face pale, gaunt and strained with guilt. He reached over the tabletop and took her hand.

“I’m a guilty man. I know I _never_ deserved you, Anne. I was not fit to even _look at you_. But some, _small, arrogant_ part of me dared to dream so. I am, _truly sorry.”_

He whispered gently. Holding her hand tighter, but he could feel her wanting to get away. He couldn’t let her. He knows he treated her appallingly. He didn’t want her to be unhappy. But that’s just the thing, _he was selfish_. Not seeing her each day was torture. He was a ruined, awful man who didn’t deserve to look at her, let alone be married to her, but he _couldn’t help_ it. _He needed her. He wanted her. He couldn’t let her go just like that..._ He was only human. He had made mistakes, and they were grave. But when he was with Anne, she made him feel, less, tainted. She made him a better man. A better version of himself. A version he liked far better than the, rogue, dashing, fortune hunter, so willingly governed by his tenacious sister. But what Anne didn’t know, was that Lucille’s last few moments on this earth, came about as a result of Thomas _finally_ standing up for himself. Horrors, executed in vengeance for his wife they had both, _between them_ , driven away.

“Not as _sorry as I was_. Thomas…” She tells him. “And if you still have _any_ care for me, _any at all_ , then you _would please leave me free_ to marry Henry, and live out the rest of _my life in peace_..” She explains civilly. He merely looked across at her, the arrogance he beheld when they sat down, had vanished due to her little speech. And she was glad for it, perhaps now he would leave _her, and Henry be._

Vianne looked down in her lap, because she knew if she looked in his eyes, she’d let loose some of the hysteria she felt at telling him such a heart-wrenching confession. She looked to her side, and then she saw Henry, and Rosamund, arm in arm, walking to their table, led there, of course, by Benton. Vianne dreaded the look she saw now on Henry’s face after he saw Thomas opposite her. His eyes were thunderous and his mouth was a straight, unamused line. He looked irate, and furious. Whereas Rosamund looked positively _giddy,_ and insatiably intrigued by the tall, scarred, handsome man she could see was now clutching Vianne’s hand across the table. When she saw them both approach, she sharply retracted her hand from under the dark strangers grasp. Rosamund’s doll-like blue eyes rolled from person to person as she smiled, getting some much needed merriment and lust for gossip from witnessing this encounter. She was a vision in pink, pink dress, pink suede gloves and a ridiculous swathe of white fur cascading from her shoulders, aswell as a rosy hat sprouting a veritable fountain of feathers from atop her honey blonde head. Henry looked fetching, tall and powerful, in his grey tweed suit and matching waistcoat. His red and yellow striped tie lining the centre of his chest. His saville row overcoat flapping at his sides, and a charcoal bowler hat tugged onto his head. The suit he always wore for work.

“Vianne…” Henry spoke as they got to the table. His eyes too, darting from his beloved, to Sharpe, and back again, firmly demanding an explanation as to why they were at the _wrong_ table, with the _worst_ sort of man.

“Sir Sharpe. You have an _odd talent_ for making London _feel small_.” Henry chided unkindly. Thomas glanced at Vianne to see her look into her lap with shame and sorrow for his surliness.

“Henry, Its-“ Miss James began, but Thomas couldn’t let her be so belittled by him. Not for something that was _not_ her own fault.

“The fault for the table relocation is _all my own_. Mr St Clair. I _assure you_ , Vianne had no part to play In it. I saw her arrive and insisted she join me, _is a_ ll.” Thomas told, after coming to a stand to welcome the newcomers. Vianne watched her ex look a little bewildered and anxious under the direction of a flirty look that Rosamund was giving him.

“And how do you know _our sweet, darling Vianne_ , _err,_ _Mr?_ ”

She asked. Stepping forwards, and dangling her pink hand out for him to kiss, and bow to her, as she was so used to. Vianne knew one thing about Rosamund, she liked her men under her _complete_ obligation, under her feet. Where they belonged… _To serve her a purpose…_ Thomas grasped her hand, though his smile was warm. Vianne knew him well enough to know that the coldness in his eyes was there because Miss Price was intending to try and flirt with him, and she knew he didn’t warm well to people with vain mannerisms, such as hers. The day Miss Price got married, would not be the day she gained a husband. But the day she _ensnared_ a man into _eternal_ servitude. 

“Sharpe. Sir Thomas Sharpe. I am, _a past friend_ to Vianne. Permit me, to whom do I have _the pleasure_ of addressing?” He asks her.

“Miss Rosamund Price, Sir Sharpe.” She spoke, lowering her long lashes, batting them at him in a sultry manner. Smiling her perfect smile at him. “I’d be surprised if you hadn’t heard of me, by now. I’m _infamous_ in London society. If anyone does any pleasure giving, Sir, I _assure_ you it’d be entirely _mine,_ now I’ve made your, _enticing company_ …” She leers prettily at him.

Thomas tilted his head in a smile, gesturing to the seats beside them. She giggled as he crossed to it, and held it out for her to settle down into. Henry remained standing. Glowering down at Vianne. Letting her know his frosty displeasure was becoming imminently _dangerous_ for her. She held his hand, and tried to make him see sense, and not explode into anger right there, in the middle of the Ritz tea room, of all places. He sat down, after she gave him a pleading look, and he slid past her, an irate mask on his face, as he took his seat, and a waiter brought them all fresh pots and saucers of tea. After he slid away, the table was drowned in an uncomfortable silence, that Henry decided he would be the first to fill.

“So, was your meeting Vianne here a _happy_ coincidence? Or was there, underhanded _plotting_ involved?” He enquired directly to Thomas, as he took off his leather gloves with disdain. Seeing Vianne look at him worriedly for his manners that he seemed to have mislaid today. Thomas met his accusation head on. No hint of shame or retreat in those blue eyes.

“I’m _staying here,_ at the Ritz, in the Prince of Wales Suite, until my house is ready to live in. I wanted to take tea this afternoon, and when I came down to make a reservation, I couldn’t _help but notice_ that you’re name was on the list to have tea this afternoon. Seeings as I have very few old friends in London. I thought we could _combine the party_ , and enjoy it together…” Thomas told.

“As _innocent as all_ that?” Henry asked through gritted teeth. Thomas looked across at Vianne to watch her sigh in irritation at his brusqueness.

“Rosamund… _Forgive me_ for bringing this up, but I heard at the ball last night that you are _courting_  the Earl of Windermere? I knew I had to confirm it when I saw you…” Vianne asked her friend across the table, distracting Henry from his anger, as he sought fit now to pour tea and not glare at Thomas across the table of cakes and tea. Rosamund made a face of attractive disdain.

“Ugh, _Heaven’s no_. The _man’s a frightful_ old _boar._ I couldn’t _stand him…_ We did a London courting. Went to the opera, went to tea at claridges, and he was expecting to get down on one knee and declare his all consuming passion for me, but… If I wanted to spend half my life playing nurse maid to an old man, or being flattened under him like a mouse under a grunting rhino, as he tries to _force_ me to bare his next heir… _Oh_ , he brought me a pretty diamond broach and dress clip, _and all that,_ _but I doubt_ I’ll be seeing him again…” She told.

Henry almost snorted his tea out of his nose at the _'forcing heir'_ part of her comment. Thomas crooked a brow, and caught Viannes eyes over his teacup. She ignored his sensual glare as Rosamud spoke so freely and garishly about sex, whereas she flushed at the mere mention of it, and looked down demurely to the saucer she held in her hand.

“ _Really,_ Rosamund, must you always be so frightfully, _vulgarly frank?”_ Vianne asks her. Rosamund smiled as if such ill descriptions suited her _immensely_. She picked up her tea, sipped it, and her curious, menacing blue eyes rolled round to watch the dark haired man beside her. She caught him staring, only for a second, at a blushing Vianne.

”When I settle down, I’m afraid it won’t be to a sensible, smart, professional boring man, like you Henry. _No offense_ , but you know I find you so _terribly tedious_. But then you and Vianne are _made for each_ other, _it’s so adorable. She will easily suit being a Doctor's wife. Whereas my desires_ for a match will not be so easily and _humbly_  quenched. _No,_ when I settle, it shall be for a _rich, exotic prince_ who treasures me and lays gifts, jewels and pearls at my feet _every day._ And I wont take _anything less_ …” She smiles confidently. Vianne smiled at her friends, sheer, blind optimism. Her digs at Henry were perfectly friendly. She knew he thought her frivolous, and she thought him to be as boring as could be, yet, somehow they still got along like a house on fire.

“Exotic princes _are thin_ on the ground in London, are they not?” Thomas asks her, as he sipped more tea.

“They _are._ Sadly. But for today. You are providing me with enough _exotic, handsome mystery_ , Sir Thomas. I could _very easily_ marry you.” She flirts. “The _scarred rogue_ with a backstory he is obviously reluctant to tell. I’d take a life of danger, swordfights and ruin over some stuffy old Duke in his Kensington palace any day…” She winks to him in a very forward manner.

Thomas smiled, wryly.

“There _are horrors_ in my past, Miss Price, Horror’s of _such magnitude,_ that if you heard, you’d run straight from this tea room _, Screaming…”_ He joked merrily. But somehow, that sentence made Vianne’s stomach drop to her knees, and her blood chilled. Because though Rosamund would think he was exagerating, she knew with certainty that _he wasn’t._

“You have _me hooked_ , Sir.” She rasped breathily. Peering at him like she was the blushing, prim, debutante, and he was the salacious, raucous, ravenous, Byronic figure who could sweep her off her feet, to a life of adventure, fights for her honour, and all the romance a single _man could ever_ give a woman.

“ _You know_ , Sir, I’ve been in London all my life, and I must say. I’ve _never once_. Heard of you. And I’ve heard _of and met everyone_ …” She declares with omnipotent pride in her lipsticked smile. Baiting him to rise to the challenge of giving them insight to his character, family, and wealth. Thomas, _evidently,_ never withdrew from the prospect of _a challenge_.

“Of course not. I’m _brand new_ …” He leers to her. Showing that her tenacity had found his equal match. Rosamund raised a pale brow, impressed by such an exclaimation.

“I made my millions, selling off a machine that can easily mine clay. I made it myself, after years of renovation and repairs. It was brought by a very wealthy, American mining company. I’m worth quite a fair _pile_ of money now. My home used to be in Cumbria, _but…_ I found myself yearning to be elsewhere…” He told her.

“How _exciting_ …. A nouveau riche _genius entrepreneur_ sits among us.” Rosamund leers. Thomas looked across the table, seeing Mr. St Clair looked suspicious, and Vianne hid her slight smile behind the rim of her teacup. “I _could definitely_ marry you now..” Rosamund then adds scandalously. Thinking that she needed to keep steering Rosamund away from planning hers and Thomas’s nuptuals, Vianne offers an opinion again just to be safe.

“Thomas was _forever tinkering_ , and building, or designing things when I knew him. He _was very_ adept with his handiwork.” Vianne smiled to her friend.

“Miss James is actually, _wearing_ , a _small example_ of my handiwork, as we speak...” Thomas spoke. There came a clatter from Henry as he dropped his teacup sharply back into the saucer, and glared, first at Thomas, and then across at Vianne.

“Don’t play the _coquette_ Miss James. Let me see Mr Sharpes fine work _, at once..”_ She encourages wildly.

The woman in question, brought her right hand up, onto the table in plain view, showing what Rosamund had clamoured for. The thin, roughly mishapen, thin silver ring that was slotted onto her right hand, on her fourth finger. It was obviously not cut by the finest ringmakers, but it had been crafted out of sentiment and love. In the middle of the ring, sat a small, jagged ruby, which glared red in comparison to the pale silver metal that was unpolished. It was an imperfect ring, that thomas knew. _But it sat on her perfect hand…._

“I do so, _adore,_ a man who can work with his hands…” Rosamund grins. Winking at Vianne across the table. The Blonde woman watched her pristine friend tilt her head in warning.

“Can you _ever endeavour_ to behave yourself, Rose?” Vianne asks.

“Not as often _as you can_ , Vianne, my darling.” The blonde beams sunnily. Before her attention was recaptured by her fascintation with Thomas by her side.

They engage in more, idle scraps of conversation as she tried desperately to delve into his past. Vianne sits, cautiously sipping her tea, staring ahead. Trying to ignore how Henry’s furious gaze landed on her, making her feel very small and frightened indeed.

She would never tell a soul the sad fact, that after their impromptu tea party finishes. When her and Henry go outside to catch a hackney carriage home. He wrenched her close, grabbed her hand, not caring if he hurt her. He tore Thomas's ring off her hand, and threw it angrily away into the gutter.

 

~

 

 

 

 


	4. Red Vixens, and Heart Autopsy's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood;

 

 

 

~

 

The Royal Society of Medicine lecture halls were like a second home to Vianne. It wasn’t in the same league as her comfortably furnished townhouse. This dwelling was as familiar as an embrace from a life-long friend. An old, musty, ancient home, filled to brim today with the sunshine from the large windows, beaming in as specks of dust danced through the shafts of honey gold light that warmed the room gently. The room scented of the familiar tang of carbolic acid, formaldehyde, and aluminia salts. The ever-present hints of such sat in the air, presiding over the room, like an un-ignorable, fat gargoyle. It was also crammed to burst with eager, smartly dressed medical students – all male _of course._ Women _rarely_ went into professions of medicine, and even if they did they were more likely to follow the route to become nurses or probationers. Vianne tried her luck, no matter how _long_ it would take her, nor the amount of _notoriety_ she’d doubtless face for it. One day she was _hoping_ to be adept enough in her skill to rise to the rank of a physician.

She had to put up with a great deal of scrutiny and mockery from the younger students. Each of them as spoiled, and as entitled as the last. Every one of them acted like they _were gods own, hand delivered_ _gift unto medicine_. Which made their arrogance and vanity all the sweeter when Dr. Harriden put them on the spot, and made them _sweat_ with the weight of his intricate, challenging questions, which no one could usually answer, _save for her_. Vianne took an eager interest in her studies, through her reading journals and taking notes, she found she gained far more knowledge and experience than from merely watching lectures. She was the butt of every joke, as every puppyish, self absorbed male who swaggered into the Dr’s lecture hall, always worried about her presence, fearing she would faint or swoon at the sight of blood. When as it was, she had done her time in nursing in the second Boer war, so she could suture, bandage, change beds, and dress wounds, and diagnose circle’s around _every last one of them._

The lecture hall was a wood-panelled room, a semi-circle shape, which housed the rows of benches that steadily staggered downwards, looking onto the surgeons table in the centre. A wall of windows, lined with shelves containing a number of medicinal jars, and a glass frame door, closed off Dr. Harriden's private study to the back of the room. After she started, he was even so kind as to give her, her own desk, opposite his. She could often be found there, when all was dark, studying late into the night, with the oil lamps burning. And _on more than one_ occasion, Dr. Harriden came in the following morning to find her asleep there, her head cushioned on the stack of medical papers she had been working on so intensely the night before. The only way in and out of the room, was right down the centre, through the creaking door up the far back. No one would, _dare_ , be late to Harriden’s lectures, because if they tried to slink in and get a seat at the back, he’d pause his speech. Make them stand, and interrogate them _solidly_ for five minutes, on the spot, and wouldn’t let them sit until they’d answered _every_ question he levelled at them.

 _Vianne adored him._ He was a middle aged, fairly classically handsome man. He was German, and every student was _wholly_ fond of him. His lectures were full of humour and personal insight. He had a gray and tawny speckled beard, and hair that was always combed neatly, he had lines of age by his warm, dark eyes and his thick lipped smile. He was fond of wearing bright bowties, dull coloured tweed suits, and was _never seen_ without his white overcoat on campus. If she _ever fell_ _ill,_ and Dr. Harriden was her physician, she’d welcome his care with _open arms and pride_.

He had an immaculate bedside manner with each and every one of his patients. He did _truly care_ for every one he nursed. _And there was no small thing he would not do_. His charity was well known.  He bought bags and bags of bullseyes, and sticky toffees for his paediatric patients. He came and sat by bedsides on his weekends off, when he wasn’t even scheduled on rota, merely _to talk_ to them about their lives and their woes, and see how they were healing. And he once, _famously,_ gave a dying patient money from his own pocket for her transport, and went along with her, so she could travel to her home up north, to say goodbye to her family one last time. A journey she couldn’t have otherwise made without his help or funding. So, he wasn’t a harsh man, but he, quite rightly, put callous, egotistical students in their place when he thought they were growing _too big for_ their _boots. And also when they tried to make fun of Vianne…_ ‘There is never,’ he would rasp _‘…and never will be room for chauvinism and prejudice in my lecture theatre,_ ’ he would growl to them if they tried to laugh down at her.

There was a low bustle of chatter buzzing in the room, before the door creaked open and Dr. Harriden strode his confident way down the stairs in the middle of the room, people watching him as he walked.

Vianne was already here, and had been ever since six, ready for the lecture which started promptly at eight _on the dot._ Harriden bid her a good morning, and shrugged off his coat, and pulled on his Doctor's whites, before lifting up the white sheet on the corpse that was laid out on the slab for them to dissect this morning, peering at the toe tag, and the clipboard Vianne handed to him. Judging by the padding on the cadaver, they would be looking at the effects of obesity and the subsequent cardiovascular diseases, and strains put on the heart. The lecture hall today was open, not only to students, but to staff, public and other hospital members.

She came dressed in her own work uniform. A taupe tweed waistcoat, and long flowing skirts, with a white, Pembroke collared shirt, and a brown tie knotted about her neck. Her flame hair was finely assembled in a neat bun, to keep it off, and out of her face, and she had on her golden spectacles, to help her eyes cope with the strain of all the stacks of reading she often had to do. She hadn’t seen a _certain someone_ slink in behind the crowds of students, but he was sat, concealed, in the shadowy corner, watching down over her, from the back of the room. She looked professional, elegant and as beautiful as ever. At ease in her natural environment. _He could happily watch her, for all eternity_ , smiling, happy and content in her field of work.

 _“Settle down_ , Settle down _please_.” Harriden ordered to the crowd before him “Today, _Damen_ …” He then took the opportunity to turn and bow to Vianne as she sat behind him, making her smile, as she was the only woman in the room he was sure to greet. He turned back to the room before him and continued his address.

“…..und Herren, we are here to examine, as you should have guessed if you’ve a decent brain in your skulls, the arterial weaknesses associated with cardiovascular disease. Our silent guest here today is clearly a man who enjoyed little exercise, far too many gin toddy’s down the crown and anchor, and an overindulgence of fatty, unhealthy foods in his diet…” He explained. A little rumble of laughter echoed to the rafters at his pub joke. He was definitely the most interesting, and lively lecturer in the University.

“Now, tell me, _Mr. Vaughn._ ” Dr Harriden, pronounced loudly, picking on the arrogant young man sat in the front row, new to the university, who was cackling with his friends as the Doctor spoke, over the fact Vianne was sat in the corner, taking notes.

It was silent in the hall, and she tried to ignore the man’s harsh whisper to his friends of ‘ _Wait til my father hears that they’re letting women into the lecture halls of the Royal Society. Its an outrage to the natural order of medicine. Anyone got smelling salts for when the chit swoons at the first sight of blood?’_ He chortled. Harriden overheard the mans, sexist remark, and was quick to place him _right_ on the spot for it. 

“…How would I be able to ascertain merely from the _mans legs_ , that he was _not one_ for _exercise_. Or that he possibly, in his living days, took a job that meant he was standing for hours at a time?…” The doctor quizzed the student.

Vianne let herself smile at seeing Mr. Vaughn flounder and stutter, his face flushing red as he was put on the spot. Thomas smirked too. From being sat up, practically in the heavens, looking down over the scene. Like a Shakespearian duel of words, unfolding before him. He leaned forwards, straining to be closer.

“I take it from your taciturn silence, Mr. Vaughn, that you are _not able_ to supply me with an _answer?…_ ” Harriden presses. Vaughn answers with a wobbly voiced, “ _No, Sir.”_ Dr Harriden turns, with his hands stuffed confidently in his pockets, to face Vianne as she sat behind him.

“ _Enlighten us_ , _dazzle and delight_ us all with your expertise, if you would be _so kind,_ Miss James…” He smirks. Turning back to see a look of absolute mortification on the lads once arrogant face.

Vianne stood and walked across to the body, feeling the silence and attention in the room weigh down heavily on her as she examined the corpse. Peering down from the knees, to the man's, chunky, cold, dead, calves. She could make out what she was looking for, the tell tale squiggle of blue veins, pushing up under the surface of the skin.

“…Obesity puts excessive pressure on the veins of the legs, contributing to a condition known as, varicose veins. Other factors associated with obesity, such as high blood pressure and lack of physical activity, are also risk factors for such a symptom. High blood pressure in the leg veins can sometimes, in turn lead to advanced symptoms such as skin changes and ulcers around the ankles, which the subject does _present clear_ evidence of, on the left and right talus bone, by both ankles. The condition is further proven by the fact that the cadaver bears what appears to be nail marks, a result of scratching his legs, as we know that one symptom of varicose veins can cause the arterial pathways to feel _heavy, irritant_ , or cause them to _ache_.” Vianne explained. Watching the boy who’d disrespected her, his face paling as he slunk down in his seat, quite rightly, looking ashamed as he wrote in his pocketbook, and with severely pinkened cheeks, avoided eye contact from both Vianne and the Doctor.

" _Danke_. Miss James." Harriden grinned. He then turned to the student. 

“Once again, you’ve proven to me that youth and efficiency are _no guarantee_ of wisdom. We tolerate many things here in my lecture hall’s. Mr Vaughn. We appreciate _reflective_ scholarly questions, well-learnt diagnoses stemming from _hours and hours_ spent hunched over your anatomy textbooks. What we _do not welcome here_ , however, is sexist, chauvinist degradation’s directed toward a University member of staff, who learnt her medical practice, healing wounded soldiers in a field hospital at the front, in the second Boer war, whilst you were still sucking on your _silver spoon_ in the nursery….” Harriden smiled gleefully at Mr. Vaughn. Who went even redder at the laughter that rippled through the room.

“May I continue my lecture _now? Undisturbed?”_ Harriden asks him, waving his hand to the corpse before him. A bobbling nod from Vaughn lets Harriden pull back the sheet covering the body, and reach for his medical tray. Which had laid out the spectrum of gleaming, silver, disinfected medical tools.

“ _Now_. Our subject today will be to focus primarily on the various complexities of the human heart, if all of you have done the reading from chapters 28 to 34 in your Jarvis textbooks, then you should be _well versed_ in what topics we will be attacking today, if you have not done the reading, then I _strongly_ suggest you pay close attention, as I will be expecting a full essay on my desk by next week. No less than 10,000 words on the dilapidation of the human heart and it’s various diseases, caused by both genetics, age and lifestyle…” Harriden insisted, hearing a slow undulation of protests and groans circle through the room.

“… _Oh, yes_. _My dear students_. The evidence of the study, shall be in the paper. Or, as you say, _proof of the pudding is in the eating._ Any complaints of this teacher’s cruelty towards you students in this task, please take them, write down, and then come and deliver them to the strict matron in the receiving room, were your comments of unjust labour will _pale in comparsion_ to the things real doctors have to deal with down there, day in, day out..” He warns with a clever smile, swooping round the body to begin the dissection.

“ _Now_. The business of medicine may begin, as ever, we are starting from the throat, by making an incision near the trachea, and following to the sternum, down the centre of the torso…” Harriden explains.

Vianne fades out listening, as from above, she hears a student drop their pencil, prompting her to look upwards. And when she did, she caught sight of a familiar, long legged, dark haired man, concealed in the shadows of the furthest corner of the lecture hall. Thomas locks eyes with her, and smiles wickedly down at her. She couldn’t deny a smouldring glare from those eyes causes a _thunderbolt_ to wrack hotly through her body, and her cheeks to go bright, hot, crimson. Vianne looks down, concentrating once again on her notes, ignoring the weight of his loving stare on her.

After the long lecture concludes, and Dr. Harriden recieves a round of applause from both the public, and his faithful students. The sharp claps echo up to the ceiling, shattering around the room like the ricochet of gunfire. As people start to chatter, and drift up out of the room. The laboratory technicians came to wheel away the cadaver on a gurney. This was hardly the place for calling upon a lady friend, but Vianne was learning that it would take an _awful lot, to shoo_ Thomas Sharpe away from his one true goal. 

Vianne busied herself tidying papers, Dr. Harriden thanked her sweetly as she helped, and she slipped into the office, trying to calm her uneasy, beating heart. And the hot and cold prickle of nerves that pricked and pulled all over. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she wet her dry lips and tried to look occupied in tidying the _already tidy_ desk. Her hands were shaking, and she felt completely giddy. _Lord help her, she’’d promised to keep away from the man…. She was engaged to someone else… yet the nearness of him made her flush, sweat and as nervous as a blushing debutante at their first ball…_

She stood with her back to the door, trying to focus on exhaling the panicky energy that niggled at her stomach at knowing he was close. A sudden tap on the door behind her made her spin round, mouth gaping, as she saw the tall, dark, devastation of her ex-partner, reclining handsomely against the doorway, politely asking to come in. Sharply tailored in exquisite clothes as usual. Today it was a red silk waistcoat, his propensity for black clothing taking over the rest of his body. His shirt was white, but his overcoat was black, a thick, fine wool by the look of it. black breeches, boots and a black knotted cravat on his neck. He held his tophat in his hands, as he looked across lovingly at her.

“May I _beg_ a moment of your time, Miss James?” He asks.

“Henry was _right_ …” She smiles, leaning against her desk. “London does indeed feel small _when you’re_ about..” She adds. Beaming.

“Never let it be said I am _undetermined_ …” He flirts with her. “But aside from seeing you do your excellent doctoring, and putting young snobs in their place, I came here to give you something which I _know belongs_ to you..” He smiles, in a somewhat more serious manner. He reached for his waistcoat pocket, and be brought out a small, silver ring. Embedded with a jagged, glaring red ruby. _Her ring. The one he had made for her…_

“How _on earth did?”_ She asks. Stepping forwards to take it from his outstretched hand, not realising she was now stood far closer to him than she should have been. He looked down at her, examing her looking at the ring. His eyes dissecting every inch of her beautiful persons. He remains dazed by her, until she lifts her head and looks at him, wanting an explanation.

“I didn’t want _to tell anyone_. After tea at the Ritz, when we got outside, Henry, practically _dislocated my finger’s wrenching_ it off my hand, and throwing it away into the gutter. He stormed off, and I _haven’t_ heard from him _since_ …” She explains. “ _How_ did you?” She asks, leaving the question unfinished. Her voice emotionally wobbling as she was _so touched_ by what he had done to bring a memento of her past life back to her. It could have been her imagination but she swore she saw his eyes flare angrily when she said how Henry had _handled her._

“Benton. He saw your, _row_ , on the pavement, and came and told me, _discreetly_. I asked him to show me where he threw the ring. I found it, cleaned the dirt off it, and there you have it. I couldn’t bare to think of having you _so rudely_ parted from it. It’s rightfully yours, and Dr. St. Clair getting aggressive at you for having it is utter  _folly_. You _deserve_ to keep a nice piece of the past with you. No matter who from..” He explains. Vianne smiled up at him, thankful for his thoughtfulness.

“Thankyou. _Truly_.” She blinks, smiling at him. “But you didn’t have to sit through a _miocardial autopsy_ to give this back to me. You could have _called for tea_ …” She suggested sweetly. He nodded, thankful for her invitation.

“Well, that’s all very well and good knowing I may receive you. But, I don’t know _where_ you live…”

He told her lightly, his smile was curious. That made an odd thought ping in her head. That dark shadowy figure she saw watching the house the other night, may _not have been him_ as she previously thought… Then again, he could have been bluffing. It was certainly something to mull over. _He wasn’t exactly the modicum of trust, to her. But he appeared to be honest with her in that, small, simple regard…_

“Whats the _matter?”_ He enquired, seeing her paused in thought, her brow pulled too in concentration. He tilted his head. He could read her like a book, _and he knew her reflective face when he saw it…_

“ _It’s nothing_.” She assures him, smiling once more. He watched her take the ring and slide it back to fit in its usual place on her lovely hand. The slender, small, beautiful things he adored to caress with his own. _But he liked them best when they were scraping down his naked back as he claimed her…_ his mind adds in a wicked afterthought. After they consummated their marriage, _he had red raw marks raked down his back for weeks, he remembers it vividly… there were no better wounds for a man to bare, than marks of passion from his lover. And vice versa, he wanted to see the pale column of her beautiful neck, dotted all over, with little black, bruised, reminders of his lips._

“I don’t know _about you,_ but, amazingly watching you help Dr. Harriden dissect a corpse, hasn’t driven away my appetite. May I treat you to tea? I saw a charming bakery just across the street from the university…” He smiled seductively, whether he meant to, or not. His eyes glittered, and back was the handsome geniality. Vianne noticed she _still_ fell for it, and this time, there were no underlying tensions forcing him to woo her. This time, it felt so much more sincere, because he was seeking after her company purely for his own pleasure… _And that fact felt wonderful to bare in her mind._

“I would like that. It’d be my pleasure to treat you, Sir Sharpe. For so _gallantly_ rescuing my ring…” She informs him.

“Absolutely not. Allow me this act of contrition. Can your Doctor _spare_ you?” Thomas asks cheekily. Folding his hands behind his back, looking cunning. Watching as she fetched her coat and hat, from the rack near him, by the door.

“He can _miss_ me for the next lecture _, I’m sure._ Anyway, he has his ward rounds, and I will be _little_ use on those…” She informs him. “Unless he needs me to _cauterize bullet wounds_ and blisters… Which is quite uncommon, _but not rare,_ for a London hospital…” She tells him. Thomas smiles, and walks casually by her side as they head up and out of the lecture hall, in single file as the stairs leading to the door were narrow.

Past the remaining people sat in the room, one of which, Vianne nor Thomas noticed how the large gentleman, in the bowler hat, examined her a _little too_ closely as she left the room. Staring after her… _They had said it was the lady, red haired, Doctor’s assistant whom was worth watching after…_

They come to the door, and Vianne holds it open for Thomas, heading out into the main corridoor of the University hospital. The large, oak lined walls, dotted with oils of famous, stuffy doctors from centuries previous, or their likenesses captured in marble, sat proudly on pedestals down the wall of windows, past the polished, black and white diamond tiled floor that let to the stairs, and out onto the campus courtyard.

It was amazing, to her, how she acclaimated to being by his side once again. It felt _natural_. It felt like they were any, other, young couple. Madly enamoured, content in one anothers company. When she was with Henry, she felt like she existed only on his arm, as he flaunted himself as a famous, miraculous doctor. She felt like an accessorie to him, like a piece of _jewellery_. With Thomas, it felt _different_. She felt more, _human_ , with him. In the way he smiled at her, laughed at her witticisms, and strode proudly by her side, engaging her in intelligent conversation that probed back and forth like a parry. Henry only _ever_ wanted to discuss the hospital, his patients and how he cured them, and how their townhouse would be when they were married. Henry wanted her as a _possession. His little Heiress._ Whereas, Thomas, wanted her, madly, mind, body and soul, _laugh, warts and all_. Because, she _is almost certain_ , he _still loved_ and _respected her._

They come to the end of the corridoor, seeing a gaggle of white coated doctors, stood chatting with other people around them. It was a small group of men, and Vianne’s ears pricked up, recognising the familiar voice…. The voice of the man who put an engagement ring on her finger to name her his……

“What are you _doing here_ , then St. Clair? Is The Royal _sick of you already?”_ Came a gruff voice, from the Doctor stood within their sight. Henry was stood round the corner, not aware Vianne was round the corner from him, within earshot.

“No. _I hope not_ … Judging by their other Doctors and nurses, I’m the only one there with a _reasonable brain._ No, I uh, _had a lovers tiff_ with Vianne. The _usual, female, nonsense_ on _her behalf_.. I knew she’s assisting Harriden today in his lecture, came to take her out to lunch by way of a _grovelling, heartfelt, apology…”_ Came his insistant voice. And the way he sneered the last words, let her know they were meant to be taken in the spirit of mockery. She slowed, stopping to keep within earshot. Thomas did too. Unsure of what to _say, or do._

“What about Rosamund? How's that little _side liason going?_ ” Another voice asks. “ _You lucky rogue_ , ensnared one, and the other merely caught in the net for a _bit of fun_ on the side…” They cackled.

Vianne's heart stopped. 

“Rosamund is _certainly fun_. She can’t _get enough_ of me, most days we make time each day for our ‘ _appointments_ ’ so to speak. Had one last week at the Ritz before we then both sat to tea with Vianne. What’s more, Vianne doesn’t _suspect a thing from it._ She still wants to marry me next month, Now, if only her _damned ex_ would stop sniffing around her like she’s a _vixen in heat…_ ” He scorned in a, smug, derisory manner.

“She’s certainly _a vixen in heat, alright_. Prettiest little thing I’ve seen _all year._   _You’ll have no regrets_ on your wedding night taking _that beauty_ to the bridal suite bed…How you going to bring that _philly to heel_ when you marry her?” Asks the same voice from before.

 _“Trust me_ , lads, once Vianne is settled as _my wife_ , I have every confidence she will put aside that _ridiculous_ feminine notion of wanting to become a Doctor. And give it all up, to be my happy, homely wife who does _nothing_ but attend to our children and do _the natural thing_ a wife does in the marriage…Besides, I may have to think about keeping Rose on, she’s an _eager lover,_ and Vianne’s no more to me than _very wealthy, damaged goods_.” He smiles, having the audacity to chuckle afterwards.

"Vianne may be a vixen. But not _my_ vixen. She has _the prim, prude gall_ to make me wait to claim _her goods_ til the wedding night. When that  _Sharpe bastard's had her on her back_ in bed..."

Vianne didn’t know it took less then _five_ sentences for her world to come crashing down on itself.

She summoned the remaining strength, and in her rage, marches round the corner, standing behind the band of gaggling men, and when some slide aside to address her, their faces fall, and the smirk she see’s on her _ex-fiancés_ face is a picture of mortification. Sensing the awkwardness about to ensue, some men slide away as she glares at the man who looked positively _drowned in shame._

“Vianne. I _didn’t_ …” He began.

“Don’t _you dare_ stand there, after _mocking me, and insulting_ me, and then say you’re sorry… Don’t  you even try and _attempt_ an apology Henry _.”_ She snaps. Having wrenched off her engagement ring and thrown it to hit him squarely in the chest, then clatter away to the tiled floor. Tears dribbled from her disgusted eyes. Thomas didn’t know what to say, he stood behind Vianne, watching her heart get broken, stomped on and _thrown_ away all in _one vicious_ gesture. _Again._

“ _Bring me to heel_ ….” She laughs horridly, mocking him. “That's all I ever was to you? Wasn't it? Your little piggy bank. Why don’t you go and take Rose to heel. In fact, go the whole hog, take her to bed, _get your Heiress. Your perfect, obedient, easily governable wife, and vast fortune another way_. As she’s clearly  _more fun_ , And after all,  _I’m only damaged goods_ …” She snarls, yelling the last words at him. Before she turns her back stomps away down the stairs, wiping tears away with the back of her hand as she rushes off. Thomas exchanges a lethal glare with Henry before he strides away, quickly going after her. Leaving Henry alone, and quite rightly ashamed of what he had said.

“Couldn’t wait _to barge in,_ could you?” Henry glares. Thomas grits his jaw as he glowered at the man.

“I never barge. Not _my style_. I’m afraid.” Thomas tells him confidently, with only the slightest sneer, as he swaggered away. _That was, after all, his style, swaggering_.

“And for your comprehension, You dare to call Vianne 'damaged goods,' I hate to think what _that makes you_ , Henry. Word drifting about London, is that you were rather in need of a wife, for running into some, _what was it? dire_ money _troubles?_   Why don’t you go back to your vain blonde and leave your _vixen to me?”_ He asks.

“You _bastard!”_ Henry spits at him as he began to descend the stairs. Thomas wanted to strangle him with his bare hands for his subterfuge. Of course, he wasn’t one to talk. But he didn’t have the effrontery to _mock her_ behind her back in her place of work. Thomas turned back and nodded, bowing, mocking him.

“I may be a bastard, but I’m a _rich_ , _entitled, non-lying bastard_ , who actually rather cares about Vianne, for far more than the state of her _bank account….”_ He finishes. Walking away

“A better off _bastard_ , I think. Enjoy your money troubles, Doctor St. Clair. The blonde can’t give you a penny of her family fortune unless you _marry her_ , perhaps you should have thought _about that?”_ He calls back up.

But by the time he got down the stairs, and into the courtyard, intending to go after her, she had vanished. _Quite obviously_ , wishing to be _alone for the time being._

 

~

 

 

 

 


	5. Opera's, Champagne, And Onset of Seduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Mozart's Don Giovanni - a cenar teco m'invitasti

 

 

 

 ~

 

Almost two week’s had passed since the Henry incident at the lecture halls, and Vianne had put him thoroughly to the back of her mind. He had sent her numerous letters, bunches and bunches of flowers. All of which she had ignored, and Rose had chipped in too. But all Vianne did was crumple them up and throw them in the fire. She’d never known herself to be so miserable. She spent her week-days helping Harriden lecture, she volunteered to serve food and help at the soup kitchen that was run by the hospital. She helped change beds, and dress wounds wherever she is needed. And her nights were desolate, she ate dinner alone, she sat in the front parlour, alone, watching the fire in the hearth roar and blaze. And after she addled her mind with a glass or two of wine, she staggers up to bed. Crawls under the covers, and cries a little before she drifts off to sleep.

The only letters she _did gladly receive_ , were from Thomas. And those she had read, _over and over._ She kept them by her bedside. He was offering to take her out to dinner, or to the opera, or to go and see a play. He told her how, when she was ready, he’d adore to take her to tea, or for a walk in the park. Or, a carriage ride if she cared for it. She wanted to see him, truly she did. But she didn’t feel able to. Not just yet. She felt betrayed, humiliated and rejected for the second time in her life by a man who’d promised her love, and fidelity. Only _this time_ , it was _far worse_ , because he had spewed such _hatred_ about her behind her back, slighting her aspirations. Her desires, and all the time all he wanted to do was get her to the altar, so he could have _her money_ , keep her shackled to the stove, at home, looking after the children as a dutiful wife, whilst he continued to take on a lover. What hit her most was the fact that Henry and Rosamund had lied, _right to her face_ , taking tea with her, going to dinner, walks in the park, the whole time making a show of being all smiles, and genial and polite. When all _the while… She couldn’t bare to finish that unsavoury thought_.

Then, the one letter that had been a complete surprise to her. Was a letter from her other friend, Jane. Jane Dodson. She was terribly sweet, a mousy haired, beautiful woman who was an utter wallflower, but had every spec of goodness a human being could hope to have. She was also of a nervous, flighty, disposition that she caught from her widowed father. He was the sort of man who sent her out in the middle of summer, wearing a scarf and mittens in case she caught a cold, and fell ill. He seemed to always worry _too much_ , and Jane had often told Vianne, that her mother worried _too little_. But she was a sweet, steady girl, and Vianne’s quiet, shy personality matched up well with janes own. She could use a bit of kindness, right now. So she had read Jane’s letter, which had asked if she would like to go to the opera on Saturday evening. Vianne had thought about it, and written her confirmation almost right away.

Saturday eve came, and Vianne was washed, dressed, and raring to go by seven o’clock. Her hair put up in one of Jeanie's artful arrangements. Swirled with pearl dotted pins to keep her unruly locks tamed. Her dress was one of the more _, daring_ , gowns in her wardrobe. It was scarlet silk, and fitted snugly around her waist, and the bodice. But the shoulders were gathered red organza, which pooled low down across her shoulders, showing off her décolletage, and her upper arms. Her corset pushing her bosom up only ever so slightly. Around her fine, pale neck she wore a string of diamonds and rubies, with diamond droplets swinging from her lobes, and red velvet gloves reached up her arms. She was never one for crowing over her looks or beauty, but she rather thought the dress made the most of her decent figure.

She made her way downstairs, and Jeanie fetched her finest, thick red woollen coat, with a dyed fur trim around the collar, and slunk behind her to help her put it on. Vianne then turned to her housemaid, thoughtful and perceptive as ever. “There, _will I do,_ do you _think?_ ” She asks the girl, who she treated more as a friend, than a servant.

“You _look lovely_ , Madam..” Jeanie smiled. Her green eyes twinkling, and her smile pulled wide. She was a waif-like, northern girl. And dutifully loyal too. There was not a thing she _wouldn’t do_ for her employer. She had pale blonde hair coiffed neatly back off her small, delicate face to perform her duties. She wore a black dress, with a white laced apron, and sensible heeled black shoes. Vianne didn’t bother with the farce of having her maid change from an afternoon to an evening uniform. It was pointless, she had a staff of three. A cook, a cooks assistant, and a maid. And she considered them close acquaintance's, not _just_ staff. She bought them each presents at Christmas, and on their birthdays. Both women stood in the hallway foyer, as Vianne adjusted her hair at the last minute, before she turned and faced her maid.

“Why don’t you have _tonight off,_ Jeanie?” Vianne smiles kindly. “There's only me coming home, and there is _no need_ to wait up to let me in, I have a key… You could go dancing, or out for a drink, if you cared too… _Go out_ and have some fun. _Lord knows,_ us ladies deserve a _bit_ of fun now and the, do we _not?”_ Vianne beamed. Fixing a wrinkle in her gloves as Jeanie reflected on her statement.

“You’re very kind, Madam. But I _have_ got some polishing and pressing _to get done_..” She began. Vianne was brooking no opposition this evening. She gave a kind, stern look to her maid.

“ _Oh, hang_ the polishing and pressing. The night is _young_ yet, _and I insist_ you put on your best dress, go out, and have a _whale_ of a time. Life is short. We must find _joy_ in it whilst we’re still young and _youthful_.” The woman concluded.

“Will you be requiring _anything else_ of me, this evening Madam?” Jeanie smiles. As does Vianne. “ _Yes_. Would you _please, hurry_ from my sight, and go and unwind. The rest of the  _night’s your own.”_ She asserts.

“I’m glad to see your spirits _so lifted_ , tonight. Madam. If I may be so bold, I am _sorry_ to hear what happened with Mr. St. Clair. But if the rumours are true, Miss. I think you’re _well shot_ of him. He didn’t deserve to marry someone _so kind, and decent_ as you.” She told her employer. Vianne smiled heartedly. Touched by her confession.

“ _Thankyou_ , Jeanie. That’s _very moving_ to hear.” She told. Jeanie curtseyed, and then slipped away back don the servants staircase to the kitchen. Off to go and do only a couple more chores, before she went out to have her fun, as she had promised Miss Vianne she would. When she was gone off to the opera, she would defy her wishes a little, and atleast lay a fire in her room, and pull down her bed for her. And _that was it_ , she’d restrain herself from any more.

A knock then came from the front door, and Vianne strode over and pulled it open, to see Jane, stood in her own. Vianne wasn’t surprised to see that aside from her coat, she wore thick gloves, and a scarf aswell. Really seeking to keep the cold at bay, as per her father’s request. She had on a long sky blue coat, with a darker, sapphire blue dress on underneath. Her mousy hair coiled atop her head. Pearls draped from her earlobes, and she smiled warmly up at her friend. Her blue eyes and small, heart shaped lips pulled up into smile. Janes carriage was awaiting them both at the curb, behind her. Jane stepped forwards to give Vianne a kiss on the cheek in greeting.

“ _Shall we?”_ Vianne smiles at her friend, as she shuts her front door, and they link arms and walk to the curb, down the townhouse steps. “I’ve been dying to see Don Giovanni _for weeks_. I _was so_ delighted when you said you’d come.” Jane smiled, squeezing her friends hand as they got down to the pavement.

“I must admit, I’ve seen _it three_ times, and each time _was better_ than the last. Goosebumps on my skin _, every time_.” Vianne smiled as they got into the carriage. Jane sat on the side opposite to Vianne, and they smiled giddily as the coach set off. Lurching away, off into the gas lit streets of early evening London. The streets were busy tonight, bustling with people and noise, the rattle of carriages and hooves. The pavements of inner London crammed with ladies and gents all going about their business. Off to take dinner, or a show. The Royal Opera house was not terribly far, and both ladies take the time sat in the coach to talk idly about their lives, and gossip about town that they’d been privy too. Jane offered a heartfelt apology for what she had heard about Vianne's estranged engagement. To which her friend smiled meekly. She cried it all out, but she wants one evening where she didn’t let the sad fact of it _dominate her mind._ After Jane offered her opinion on the subject, Vianne leaned forwards and grasped her hand, holding it tight. She smiled and told her friend that she was letting it _go_ for tonight. This was her night of _freedom,_ and _fun_.

The carriage jumbles and jolts to a slow, lurching stop. And the footman helps both ladies descend the coach, coming to the pavement, outside the tall, stone pillars, blazing gold brick lighted by the torches outside the door. People were milling around the steps, and gliding in the doors. Jane and Vianne walk side by side up the steps, eager to get out of the nights chilling breeze, and glad to enter the warm, elegant atmosphere of the opera house foyer. Seeing all the men in black tie, and the rainbow of coloured dresses that all the ladies were wearing. The high ceiling glittered with the light from a chandelier, elegantly throwing drops of light to each corner of the room. The scarlet carpets were trod, thick and silent, under many pairs of feet. They make their way up the stairs, round and up onto the first floor landing. Where porters offer to take their coats.

Vianne didn’t like to think how people whispered and sneered behind her back as she passed. Notorious for being the woman that _jilted_ Henry St. Clair. But at the same time, was being cuckolded by the vain, energetic, blonde, Price woman to boot. The gossip mills would surely be _ripe for weeks_ with such news. When they get to the top of a staircase, a crimson coated porter with a bell top hat, relieves both ladies of their cumbersome coats and inspects their tickets, offering to show them the way to their seats in the circle stalls.

“Miss James…” Comes a voice from behind her, her spine tingles, and she turns to address the silvery, throaty voice that belonged to one, _devastatingly_ dashing man, and no other.

She turns and see’s, _who else,_ but Thomas Sharpe bounding up the steps, his long, black suited legs striding quickly to get to her, he looked an absolute handsome vision in his coat tails. His hair brushed back, and the scar under his eye rumpled as he smiled, that cheek creasing, eye wrinkling smile up at her, and Jane.

“I’m _beginning_ to think you’re _following me_ now... This is cause for _suspicion_. Seeing you everywhere _I go…”_ Vianne tells him seriously. Lowering her eyes at him, her smile fond and _oh, so_ slightly teasing. He delights in seeing her playfulness. He hoped she wouldn’t have been too downcast over her loosing Henry _– he certainly wasn’t._

“Don Giovanni, Vianne. Where _it goes_ , you are _sure_ to follow it. Do you not remember my going with you to see it years ago? In all my life, I’ve never seen you _so beguiled_. I reckoned my chances of seeing you in the audience tonight were _fairly credible_.” He told her. Taking her hand and kissing it. Seeing she was giving him that smile that could _lighten_ entire rooms.

“Sir Thomas Sharpe, Might I have the pleasure of introducing you to my, _very_ , close friend, Miss Jane Dodson.” Vianne smiled, as Jane nodded humbly to Thomas, still clutching her scarf wrap to swathe about her shoulders, of there was a chill in the stalls where they sat. Her father _so detested_ drafts, and he had passed that phobia to be well learned about them on to his daughter.

Thomas took Janes hand and kissed it also. Being polite as ever. Vianne saw Jane startle slightly at his sudden appearance of the scarred, tall, handsome man that he was. Jane had a tendency to be _a slight_ wallflower from time to time, and Thomas’s beauty could beguile and intimidate _most people_  if he let it. He was a dynamite, undiluted, powerfully tall, shot of a man.

He could fill _entire rooms_ if he so chose, with the way he moved, the way he would hold his head, the way his eyes sharply took in everything around him. But, on the other hand, he could also chose to go unseen, and make his tall, impressive form somehow go completely _unassuming_. He managed to be enigmatic to her, and he _always would_ be in that regard. _The duality of the man was astonishing._

“It’s lovely to meet you, Mr Sharpe.” Jane smiled prettily. Thomas already liked her much more than that, flirtatious, preening blonde whom Henry seemed to prefer. She had promised to be a faithful friend to Vianne, but betraying her behind her back with her own fiancé was _not_ an action of a friend. He has been among London society long enough to tell the kind of termagant girls he should avoid. Miss Jane Dodson _wasn’t one of those_. Her placid nature, he could tell, went swimmingly along with Vianne. Who herself, could be a little reticent if the mood took her. Jane Dodson seemed a good friend to his Vianne. Constant, balanced and caring in nature. Those were the kinds of friends _she deserved_ to have. Not the vain, frivolous, pompous headed girl who fancied herself the _Queen of Sheba_. And demanded her lifestyle suit that of _royalty, accordingly_. Interested in cruel gossip, and nothing but the desires of her own character, and toxic personality.

“Where are your seats for this evening, Ladies? If one _may enquire_..” He asks them out of pure interest. He wasn’t easily able to _peel_ his _eyes away_ from Vianne.

He had to bite his lip slightly at the cut of her crimson silk gown that instantly aroused him _to no avail_. He hungered to see more of her by way of _tearing it off._ The delicate sheer fabric swathing her shoulders looked delectable, framing her perfect, pale, slender body, the ample bosom, the small waist, that perfect form _he’d so missed_ being in his bed, able to touch her freely whenever the mood took him. Her hair being up allowed him to once again _yearn_ after kissing that long, pale neck that his lips _begged_ to be reunited with. What he loved best about her, was that she wasn’t all skin and bone to have in his arms. She was supple, with rounded thighs, a gloriously soft rear, and a figure that was just a little above the Gibson-like, waif look that was all the rage nowadays. _His Vianne was all curves_. All curves his hands _itched_ to trace again, he wanted - _so badly_ – to be unified once again, with her bare, hot, smooth skin. He’d sell the _entire_ world away for such an honour. An honour, he knew he didn’t deserve.

_But that didn’t stop him from wishing blindly, greedily, for it…_

“In the stalls…” Jane tells him, showing him the tickets. Handing it to him. He gave her his most warming smile, taking it in his palm and looking at it. Before he gave it back, that cunning expression of his making Vianne curious...

He crooked a finger politely to one of the porters, who eagerly stepped too. And Both ladies shared a laugh with each other, as they watched the man whisper something into theatre porters ear. The porter bowed his head, and muttered a “Very good sir.” With a smile, and they watched him gesture to the stairs, leading up to the boxes. “If you please, ladies, this way to the Balcony boxes…” He suggested. Vianne turned to Thomas, seeking an explanation. He merely gave her a leering smile instead.

“Our tickets were for the stalls. There must have _been a mistake_ , _Sir_ …” Vianne smiles knowingly to the porter. Who nodded. “Mr Sharpe has insisted that the two of you, were to be shown to _his box_ to take in the show, Miss…” Came the explanation. Vianne fought not to let her smile grow wide, and Jane was not able to hide her astonishment – she really was a placid soul.

 _“Oh,_ but we couldn’t possibly _impose. Sir_. And we haven’t enough to _afford_ you payment for being in the _boxes_ …” Jane stammered madly, unfailingly polite as she _always_ was. Thomas regarded her protests with a sly grin. Thomas offered the flustered Miss Dodson his arm.

“Miss Dodson, the _mere fact_ of yours, and Miss James’s _exquisite_ company for the evening in my box is payment _enough_. Is a _most welcome_ , _and pleasant_ addition to my _otherwise lifeless_ evening watching the Opera all on _my own.”_ He tells her. Vianne rolled her eyes at him, smiling. He was too charming for his _own good, at times_.

She turned and continued climbing the stairs, following after the porter. Who led them up to another landing, and along a corridor, striped with expensive wallpaper, and into a dark, luxurious box, with a view looking down all across the theatre. The dark, velvet red seating filled by men and women, far down below. The golden shimmer of the lights from the golden gilded ceiling, and the elegant ambience are a heady, tasteful combination. There were so _high_ up, it almost made Vianne _giddy_ as she leaned over and peered down at the stalls below, seeing the large drop in height. Thomas and Jane caught her up, and the porter informed them the show would be starting in five minutes time.

“They say opera is best enjoyed at altitude. Of course, the _same_ can be said for champagne…” Thomas leered, and from a silver tray far off to the side, on a small table, already having been poured, he hands them both a dainty tulip shaped glass, the taupe drink inside fizzing and spitting, and as cold as ice to the touch. Jane looked like a woman in seventh heaven. Conflicted as to whether she deserved such treatment.

“Sir Thomas, you are _far too_ generous…” She admonished with flushing cheeks as she gingerly sipped the champagne, letting the tang of it pierce her tongue.

“I don’t know _about that_ …” Thomas smiles to Jane, speaking as his eyes met Vianne’s. Their gaze resting on her made her breath skip and her chest tighten. “Call it my act of _contrition_...” He says, looking directly at her, letting Vianne know he was owing her some of what he considered his life-long debt, one he would always be prepared to pay – his punishment for loosing her. For _treating her so ill_ , and not realising what he had until it was gone.

Of course, it would take more than champagne and a swanky opera box to win back her heart. But he had to _start somewhere.....now, didn’t he_.

She knew then that he had not given up hope on her.. _Not one bit._ It warmed her heart right through. Now Henry had been proven to be a money seeking _, Lothario_ , of a man. She began to wonder, _maybe, just maybe_ , She shouldn’t have been _so rash_ to dismiss him so quickly. _Of course_ , she wasn’t saying that cornering her at a ball, and kissing her senseless, threatening to take her back, was _entirely the proper_ way to win her over. She had wondered if it was the passion of the moment in seeing her again that had made him so _frenzied_. But this man she was looking at now, the adoring, careful, attentive man was _shades away_ from the one she had married _all those awful years ago_. _Perhaps he had changed. And maybe it was for the better_ …

He was penitent now. And in time, she thinks she could let her foolish heart, come round and open itself to the idea of loving him once more. _Then again_ , she thinks, _she wasn’t all entirely sure that it had ever stopped adoring him in the first place._ Despite all the hurt, scandal, deceit and pain, he was the first man she’d _ever_ sold her love away to. _And she'd never had the mind to withdraw it from his clutches…_

She knows then, in that moment, that she could let herself go to him again… _Body, mind, and soul._ She snaps put of her reverent daze, when he adds something to his speech, to make it seem to Jane as if he wasn’t talking about the state of his and Vianne’s future happiness.

“…How could I ever forgive myself, If I let two, delightful ladies, _ruin their_ experience of Don Giovanni in seats with such a _poor view_ as the stalls, when there is a box to be had… it’s _a veritable crime_ ….”

He japed. Speaking to Jane, before he turned to see Vianne, frozen in her contemplation, behind the seats in the box. He tilted his head curiously at her. She smiled and shook off her reverie, striding closer, settling herself in the seat next to Jane. Who had pulled hers right to the corner of the box, to better see down.

“Father would _have a fit_ if he saw how high up we are. He’d start going on about altitude sickness, and head complaints…” Jane smiled with glee. Vianne could see that Thomas’s generosity _greatly_ thrilled her friend.

They took to their seats, Thomas gallantly let the ladies have first pick. Jane chose one nearest to the left of the box. Able to have a perfect view down across the stage. Vianne sips her champagne, the fruity sharp notes tingling on her tongue. Lingering on her palette, as Thomas settles into the chair, dangerously close, next to her.

This was the first time she noticed what his being near did to her. Her cheeks flushed, and she became hyperaware of the barest whisper of his suited arm brushing against hers. She had to chide her senses, and get them to _compose_ themselves. Being sat within touching distance of the man was making her chest heave and flush. The lights, flickered, and began to dim, and Vianne turns her attention to the stage below them. _Thomas,_ however, _turned his attention on her…_

Whilst she was watching the stage, as the curtains ascended, showing the set and the scenery, all through the small, red binoculars that the theatre provided. She could see the main characters move and mill about, as the music began. Thomas leaned close when she was unaware, and Vianne almost stopped breathing when she felt _his lips_ , breathe _hotly, and not an inch_ away from her neck as he spoke, whispering to her, in that low, _hypnotic_ tendre she _so adored_. Leporello prowled around the stage, complaining about his masters unearthly demands, and how _he one day_ dreamed of _being free of him..._

All the while, Thomas remained close, his lips practically _on_ her neck, as he spoke. Making her feel like the evening would be a very, slow, torturous one. One in which he would use his whispers _to seduce her_ , sat here, in the dark, _closer_ than was proper. Secretly, it thrilled her, but she’d never admit to it.

“You know, Vianne, It is said that the moral of the opera's story was ‘ _Such is the end of the evildoer: the death of a sinner always reflects his life’”_ He rasped.

“ _Poignant,_ do you _not think?”_ he smiled, speaking enigmatically into her neck.

 

~

 

 

 


	6. Longing and Ravenous Wishes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Never Get Enough - Lianne La Havas

 

 

~

 

Vianne had never been quite so _aware_ of someone being as close to her in her entire life, as Thomas was to her, all throughout the performance.

Every time his arm moved she could feel the air around them _shift_. Because they were _so_ close, there was no doubt they were sharing the same air. She felt the heat of his breath tingle into the crook of her neck as he leant closer, and whispered an explanation as to the scene unfolding out below them. She already knew the opera. Forwards, backwards, and inside out. But the way heat trickled, sliding down her spine when he leered closer, _made her ache._ She noted with proper, elegant disdain that she didn't actually _mind_ his little whispered reminders being crooned into her ear.

By the time the interlude curtain fell. Vianne had been sucking and biting _so much_ on the inside of her lower lip, it almost felt _sore_. _But she didn't know that Thomas knew this too._ He didn't see much of the opera. He didn't see the death of the Commendatore. Nor Donna Elvira singing woefully about the abandonment of her lover. He didn't even _bat an eyelid_ when Leporello about Giovanni's long list of women and infidelities. People would think him _an utter_ fool. A royal box with a view _as fine_ as any that riches could buy, down across one of the most beloved, popular opera's now showing. _All that.._. And he could still only watch the _breathtaking_ spectacle that was his ex-wife.

The profile of her delicate face was _exquisite_. The fine, porclain china of her bone structure. Those cheekbones pressing up under her skin. That pale, cream coloured pallor that he oddly found was one of the, _many_ , alluring things about her. It was _torture,_ to lean so close, ushering soft words close to that fragrant, silken neck he adored. She still wore that perfume. That expensive French one. _Très séduisant._ How many mornings had he watched her rub the glass stopper on her wrists, and dollop it to settle on the juncture between her shoulder and neck. It was then _all his_ to seek later. Dried on her skin. The scent weakened, but it's allure still drew him to her, _like a magnet._

He couldn't help his bold evaluation of her. Sat, gently, and quietly enraptured by the performance of one of her favourite operas. Her eyes sweeping and flirting across the stage. That led him to look at the length of her dark eyelashes. The rounded apple shape of her rosy cheek. That fabulous bodice straining under the size of her ample bosom, pushed high by her corset. Swelling and falling with each breath. Pushing the delectable, pale globes of her beasts up high. His eyes wandered down those globes, admiring them, heading up. Past her throat, up her chin, assessing the subtle curve of her small, upturned nose. Her lower lip caught under her teeth as he watched her, _smirking_. She was very obviously trying not to pay _too much_ attention to his intimate closeness. In this light, he noticed that fiery hair dulled down by several shades. But even in the half dark, it still _glowed_ like the colour of a naked flame.

Her beauty was incomparable. Before he met her he was only able to comprehend Lucile's dark, mournful allure. For his whole life, she was the thing that eclipsed him. Caring after him, protecting him. Shielding him from harm. Only when he grew up, and saw more of the world did he realise that her protection for him was more akin to _suffocation_. And her love, a force of _fierce_ possession and jealousy. And then when he saw Vianne... He just _knew_ she was _everything_ that Lucille _was not._ Where his sister was dark, callous and controlling. Vianne was bright, gentle and nurturing. Lucille was cold and shadow. And Vianne was a warming blaze of sunshine.

At first, Lucille had _hated_ her. She detested every civil word the new Sharpe bride had spoken to her. She glared. And turned her back on the woman. Thomas had watched them interact with bated breath. Knowing full well his twins hostility was a _dangerous_ forewarning. Lucille made it quite clear that the new addition to Allerdale Hall was _not_ a welcome one. But where she was stubborn, _so was Vianne._ In her resolute, quiet and determined way. She tried _everything_. Small talk. Chatting about music, common interests, and books. Asking if she wanted to go for a walk. Cooking breakfast or dinner for her sister in law and husband. Yet _nothing_ seemed to work. _Then came the piano..._

One morning, Lucille came down to find a brand new broadwood grand sat in the foyer. And sat at it, was Vianne. Playing a haunting melody. Satie. Gnosssiene No.1. That swaying, haunting tune. And she had ascended the stairs, transfixed by the melody and the new sight of the foreign instrument in her home. She walked up behind Vianne. And settled herself on the piano stool. Watching her play. When the piece finished. Vianne turned to Lucille and smiled. Telling her the instrument was all hers. She played so well. She deserved a device with all the keys and that was _in_ tune. The shabby, ancient one in the parlour had several _keys missing._ The Sharpe twin warmed up to her _substantially_ after that.

Thomas watched with loving pride as his sister thawed to spending time with his Vianne. They spoke more. About literature. Spent afternoons in the same parlour, embroidering or reading together. One day, Lucille fell ill with scarlet fever, and Vianne didn't leave her _side_ as she nursed her back to health. Helping bathe her in carbolic. Feeding her broth. Watching over her bedside til the fever broke.

And what's more,  Lucille then didn't _plague_ Thomas for his ' _attentions_ ' as she usually would have done. In time, she became fixated on spending time with his new bride. _Obsessed_ even. Thomas didn't know if he found that a good or a bad thing. As it turned out... It turned out to be a _very bad thing indeed._ A thing which left him devoid of a wife, and Lucille bitterly livid at him for driving her away. _What happened next didn't bare thinking about..._

He blinked the thought away. His Adam's apple galloping down his throat as he swallowed away the _unsavoury_ thought. He refocuses on her. Snapping back into life as the red crimson curtain came down to obscure the stage.

He watched her applaud, and turn to Jane beside her. They both discussed the opera thus far. He could see Miss Dodson's elated delight in her smile, the beguiled look in her eyes. He was weirdly pleased to have caused her smile this evening, she was a _steady, sweet_ girl. It was _nice_ to think he had the power to make other people happy. He had once been a selfish being. And found little joy in it. But since his inventions took off, his riches growing, he found all the well learned, greedy, self interest that had been hammered into his head all his life, now slipped away. It grew quiet. And he let it. He didn't _covet_ it anymore. He found _far more_ happiness and joy in providing the kindling for other peoples smiles.

Vianne finally turned back to him, looking over her shoulder as the buzz of chatter flitted up like swallows, arching across the gilded theatre house ceiling as people drifted around, and made the most of the intermission. She smiled at him. And he couldn't help but become transfixed by the gaze of her hypnotic pale eyes once more. She smiled that petite smile at him.

"Would you excuse us? We'll be back _shortly_..." Vianne asked him as her and Jane came to stand. Feeling shaky and weak at the way his eyes still lovingly caressed her. As if he could see _right through_ her dress. It was making her skin go all blotchy. Here cheeks redden and her chest flushed.

He nodded. Shutting his eyes in a kind smile. "Don't leave me deprived of your _excellent_ company for _too long."_ He persuades with _that_ cunning grin. His posture relaxed, reclining back in his chair. Hands folded leisurely. Those long legs crossed like a resting cricket.

Vianne smiled, her and Jane slid away, past the velvet curtain and out into the tasteful theatre halls, through the first landing bar, and leading on through to the ladies powdering rooms. Vianne didn't need to seek relief in any way. She only needed some cool air to alleviate her flushed skin. _And try and calm her thumping heart._ And that string of lust that _tugged achingly_ at her gut whenever she could _feel_ Thomas's eyes glance over her. The two ladies strode arm-in-arm in each other's confidence, discussing the play and Jane once again remarked on Thomas's thoughtful, kindness.

"Vianne. I think. That Sir Sharpe is painfully _keen_ on you." Jane deduced. A curious glint in her eyes.

Vianne laughed. Nervous laughter shaking her body. Wracking through her as she fought hard not to let her cheeks redden at the prospect of him being soft on her.

"He _is not."_ Vianne lied. Averting her gaze from her friend. Biting down her lip again.

"On _my honour._ Vianne Earnest-James. He is _besotted_. His lips were practically _on your neck_ for the _entire_ first scene." Jane ushered quietly. Nudging her elbow softly into her scarlet silk ribs.

"He...." Vianne swallowed. Trying to find her words. "..is _very_ attentive. I will not deny. And I've _yet_ to find a gentleman so enamoured of the same opera as I am." She told Jane in a flimsy promise.

"Say what you like..." Jane pressed. Looking terribly self assured of herself. "He looked at you as if you were _heaven on earth._ And as we all know, there can be no _genteel desires_ in such a look. A gentleman is merely a patient wolf in disguise..." Jane warns.

"Your father _told_ you that, _did he not?"_ Vianne asks her with mirth.

"He merely _warned_ me of what the dangerous look of a rogue is capable of doing to a gently bred young lady... He tells me the streets of London are _perilous_. But there are far _greater_ dangers in the secret lusts lurking in the minds of virile, young, noblemen." Jane stated. Vianne smiled at her. Not wanting to admit that she really was right on that matter.

It was then they were both approached by a theatre porter. Who asked if she was Jane Dodson. When Jane told her she was. He handed her a note. Which she hurriedly tore open to devour. Vianne watched her pale face go all the more colourless. Blanching as she read it.

" _Oh_ , Vianne. I'm _so terribly sorry._ But I have to leave. My father thinks he may have caught a cold. He begs me to go home and help tend to him.... I knew it was a mistake sending him out for a constitutional this morning without _two scarves..._ " She fretted. Before she turned to Vianne and clutched her friends hands.

 _"Oh._ Do forgive me. Would you offer my most sincere apologies to Sir Thomas? I _feel awful_ to repay his generosity in such a way as this. But I cannot leave father unattended in his poor state..." She cries in worry. Vianne nods. Understanding. Bidding her well-wishes for Mr. Dodson's poor health, and a speedy recovery. She watches Jane scramble away. And only in the wake of her friends distressed disappearance. Does the dawning if a new realisation settle in on her. She felt much more vulnerable heading back to Thomas _alone_.

She felt like a feeble scurrying animal wandering back into a larger, feline predators territory. Bare. _Naked_. And _utterly exposed_.

She wets her lips. Treats herself to a stiff shot of whiskey from the bar. Ignoring how that caused raised brows and looks of intrigue from the bartender. Especially when she downs the shot. Necking the burning fluid right back. Tossing it down her throat. Feeling the sharp heat trickle down her torso, settling low in her belly. Steeling her shaky nerves. She worries what Thomas will think of sensing the smell of spirits on her breath... But then again, he probably wouldn't be getting _close enough_ to her to taste her breath... _She hopes._

She holds herself tall, and makes her way back into the box. Her hand pauses in reaching for the curtain, and then she bites her lip, and whisks it aside. Seeing the darkness of the crimson box once more. And the waiting rogue, dashing and dark in a manner akin to a penny novelette villain, still relaxed and rested in his chair. Luxuriously reclining in comfort. His attention switching to her as she re-entered. On seeing the absence of Miss Dodson. Vianne noticed he looked both _intrigued..._

_And ravenous..._

He tilted his head, looking like a panther, assessing, sizing up a wounded deer.

"Janes father was taken ill. She has gone home to tend him, and has asked me to convey her regrets to you for... _abandoning_ your _excellent_ hospitality." Vianne told him. Feeling the urge to fidget nervously as she stood there being so heavily  _scrutinised_ by his piercing eyes.

Thomas smirked. One side of his thin lips lifting up. Causing his scar to crease on his cheek. She noticed he took a valorous assessment of her body. Up her hips. Past her waist. Her bosom, lingering on her throat and settling at last back on her face.

"The second half is about to begin.... Why don't you come and retake your seat. _Anne_." He urges gently. Goading her closer into his trap.

She wet her lips. _This made his first clench._ And he wasn't even going to _mention_ what it did to his groin. He watched her cross and place herself down onto her seat once more. She noted it was still positioned _unusually close_ to his own. She fussed with settling her skirts nicely around her legs, and peered down across the theatre. Watching men and ladies mill about below. It was a few long seconds before she turned and finally met Thomas's eyes once more.

"You look _nervous_." He states, or asks. _She can't be sure_.

That honeyed voice purring at her didn't help her nervous disposition. She swallowed. Trying her level best to remember she was a grown woman. How was it possible to feel so disjointed, hot and her skin prickled hot and cold all at once, with overwrought jitteriness? They had been married, _for gods sake. Man and wife._ yet when he looked at her in a certain way, or let his eyes _slowly_ assess her, she felt like a blushing wallflower speaking to a man for the _very first time_. They had shared a bed. Seen one another _naked_. On one very _memorable, pleasurable,_  occasion on their honeymoon, even shared a bath together. She couldn't for the life of her figure out why he unnerved her quite as much now.

"You make me _nervous_. And I cannot comprehend _on earth why..."_ Vianne spoke out, finally letting loose a big long breath out afterwards. She saw his smile widen as he looked at her out of the corners of his eyes. His fingers idly toying with the silver sovereign ring on his little finger.

" _Nervous?"_ He asked. "I can't see why my presence would make you nervous..." He adds. Having the cruelty to quirk a dark, amused brow at her. She surveys him with a firm, chiding look on her face.

"You make me so. Because how could any woman look on a man she used to love, and not feel swayed by his _attentions_... _Especially after..."_ She lets the sentence hang in the air. He knew full well to what she was eluding.

"...after what I promised you so _savagely_ at the ball the other evening..." He finishes. His face only looking the smallest bit resigned. That showed he was aware it wasn't polite. _But that he didn't regret it._

"I meant it Vianne." He promised her faithfully. The smile dropping from his face. There was no trace of amusement now. This was not something to smirk at. He was deathly serious.

"Though I... Feel I may have _overwhelmed_ you. Cornering you like that. I shouldn't have been so brusque. But seeing you again... _Did something to me._ It stirred something _deep. Something... Primitive. I..._ " He floundered. Shaking his head as he leaned closer to her. Clutching her hand. She jolted inwardly as his fingers lovingly caressed her own.

"I am _ashamed_ of the way I forced myself on you that night. Vianne. But I was overwhelmed to see you again. I know you marrying me was... A cleverly constructed guise on my behalf. And I'm _horrified_ for that. _Truly I am._ I took advantage of your position and wealth. And I only thought of myself in our match. But then... I began _to see you._ I began to fall _so madly_ in love with you Vianne. You were my _salvation_. And I hated the way Lucille made me treat you. It was weak and pitiful of me. To let her manipulate me in _such a way._ So I know why you would be completely entitled not to _trust_ me again..." He informs. He squeezes her hand tighter. Looking down into her lap.

"I'm _not_ worthy of you. Vianne. That much I know to be _obvious_. But I've been torturing myself with the vain hope that you could find it in your heart to give me a _second chance.._." He told her.

"I. _I confess_ I found it hard to comprehend what you and Lucille have done. And all you did to me. And those other _poor_ women before me. But I didn't divorce you and leave for the reasons of your... _Lies_ , and your unfaithfulness. Thomas." She admits. Her eyes focused on the theatre down before them. Not meeting his gaze. He frowns. Bewildered.

"Then _why?"_ He asks before he could stop himself. This time. She did turn and meet his eyes. And he could see her tears sparkle in her blue orbs in the half light. Shining like molten pewter threatening to drop from her eyes at any second.

"You weren't the _only one_ with _secrets_ to keep you know." She tells him in a small, quietly confident voice. She could see by the careful, studious look on his face, that he was busy absorbing that statement.

"And _yes_. I did find it _very hard_ to forgive all that you did." She tells him firmly.

He reached over and took the initiative to brush her tears away. Her sadness making the very core of him ache. And he deserved it. He let her anger and disappointment hit him square in the chest. He needed to feel it. Not feeling it for so long was a long withheld punishment he would now gladly accept. If it meant he got his Vianne back.

"I'll do all I can to try and prove to you I'm _not that man_ anymore. Vianne. _I have changed._ It took me _two years_ and loosing you to realise what I was. What that dark, rotting house, and my poisonous sister had _made_ me become... _I hated it._ " He explains. Then an odd thought popped into his head. And he let himself say it as his hand reached over to idly touch and toy with one curl of copper hair near the nape of her pale neck.

"Loosing you. Divorcing you... Was the most _heart wrenching_ realisation I've ever had to suffer through. Have you heard that Leonardo Da Vinci quote. The one about _the sky?"_ He asks her. She shakes her head. Waiting to hear what he had to say.

"Once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes forever turned skywards, for there you _have been_ and there you will _long_ to return." He ushers softly. Seeing she looked at him with a mixture of pain, and heartache. But with longing too, in her eyes.

"You were my _skies_. Vianne. You were bright. And warm. You made the day just a little bit sunnier by seeing your smile. You were _enchanting_ , and the _only_ thing that made me want to get up in the morning and do something _good_. You kept _all the darkness_ at bay." He told her softly.

She swallowed. Allowing herself a small smile. She looked deep into his eyes. Inhabiting that private place. _The place only she'd found_. She gets lost in his expression of earnestness and regret.

"I can see the differences in you. You know. They are _subtle_. But they're _there_. They were present in you two years ago. You were a different man, when _away_ from Lucille's influence, Thomas. I had hoped _in vain_ we might leave Allerdale and go somewhere new. A _fresh_ start. But I see now it was an impossible, foolish dream. The darkness and decay of that place suited her. _You both clung onto it._ But. I _had_ to leave. I had my reasons for doing so. I thought you _didn't love me_ anymore. I left you my money. I slipped away to start another life. I figured that you _didn't_ need me. That's _why_ I was so surprised to lay eyes on you the other night. I thought if you had my money, and Lucille _that..."_ She struggled to finish the words. Even thinking them was like a dagger into her heart.

Thomas came ever closer, tipping her chin up with his hand, to force her to meet his eyes.

"That I wouldn't _need you_ anymore. But _nothing_ could be further from the truth. I needed you then." He spoke in sheer desperation. His hands came up to cup both sides of her neck. And she let herself go weak at his touch. Her throat tugging up as she swallowed her emotions down. Lest they drowned her. Choking her. His big, soft, long fingered hands on her neck made tears spear her eyes.

"I _need you now Vianne._.. _God forgive me,_ I'm a _monster_ and I don't deserve something so untainted and _good_ as you. But I _need_ you now. _I need you madly."_ He promises. She bit her lip again and she saw it made him look insatiate as he gazed at her mouth.

Maybe it was the confessions they'd offloaded. Perhaps it was the darkness of the theatre that made his eyes glisten. The magic of the operatic music thundering away below them. Or possibly, it was simply the case that she no longer had the strength to deny her heart what it so truly wanted. But finally, Vianne let herself feel all that love for him come swooping back into her body on swift wings. Because she brought one hand up, and stroked a thumb down that garish scar. Then she leant forwards and _kissed him._

His hand went instantly to the back of her hair and held her there. His lips softening onto hers, a small whimper wracking through her body as a growling, wanton, moan shuddered through his. His arms left her and curled around her, hauling her off the chair and partially onto his own lap. Kissing her with a fevered need, a _passion_ that left her lips feeling _bruised_. Her hands flailed to grasp the back of the chair behind his head, steadying herself. _But she had a feeling this man wouldn't let her fall._ One hand of his trailed across her back. Skipping up to brush his fingertips over the scooping neckline at the back of her dress. That stole all her breath. When they finally break free of the embrace, she only then realises she is practically on his lap, both her legs draped over one knee, and her arms strung across the back of his neck. Brushing the small hairs at his Male that felt like shorn velvet.

When they do break apart, she feels disorientated, as if the world had been spun around to settle on it's head. Levering apart, she sees his lips are red and wet from kissing her. And his hot breath tingles as it strokes across her own mouth. He was pleasantly surprised to find the burning taste of whiskey on her tongue. _She did always hold a propensity for tasting delicious to him._ He delighted seeing that her hair had been mussed. Now strands curled down by her flushing chest and neck. And some swung into her eyes. She was panting. But so was he. They were making an absolute shameful spectacle. Embracing in such in way out in public. They'd be flogged by the gossip mongerers for _such loose_ behaviour.

"I do have _one last_ confession..." He rasped. His lips sliding up the side of her neck. Making her stutter, and her eyes flutter back into her skull in pleasure. He got much closer now to the scent of her perfume that he hungered for. The tip of his nose, and his lips nuzzling into her neck. _Kissing. Breathing. Taking her in. Slowly._ Drinking in the familiar feel, shape and scent of her in his arms once more. He smirked as he scraped a biting nibble to tantalise her just under her ear. Causing her to gasp, and thread her fingers into the back of his inky hair at the sensation it caused to pool low. Yearning desire flared in her belly. Her back arches and she unknowingly pressed herself _deeper_ into him.

"What _is it?"_ She rasps. Letting herself sink into his hold. Though part of her still resented him for all the misery he'd caused her. A larger part of her eclipsed the concern on noting how good it felt to be back in his arms.

"Henry St. Clair. And Rosamund Price are sitting in the box _opposite us._.." He smirks. Sighing onto her neck. His breath and heat, the _sheer_ nearness of him, making her flush.

She gasps anew at that, twisting her neck to the side, to peer across the darkened theatre, now seeing the familiar blonde haired woman. And Henry's russet hair and tall, stocky build. And she blanched in seeing that the latters head was turned, glaring in her direction. His mouth a disgusted, straight line. His eyes glowering disdain at her. Probably because  she then felt Thomas _slowly_ kiss up her neck as she looked over. 

Vianne peered across at him. Before she turned to the man whose arms she was in. Something washed over her then. A _cruel desire_ to get back at him for all the deceit. Laughing at her with Rosamund behind her back. Then sitting in front of her, taking tea, and lying straight to her face. She boldly wanted him to feel _pain. Pain_ as _she_ had felt. Not because she wanted him to feel sorry for their estrangement. But she wanted him to know that she wasn't merely _'damaged goods'_ she was a desirable, wholesome woman. She turned to Thomas.

" _Kiss me..._ Thomas. Kiss me _now._." She whispers in a hush. He assessed her with a hot look in his eyes. Evaluating her before he smirks and is only _too happy_ to fulfill her wishes. His mouth slips naughtily up the side of her neck once more. He knew that made her _go weak._

" _Vianne James._ Are you _using me_ to get back at Mr. St. Clair?" He asks her seductively. 

She could feel his wicked smirk, and his other hand left her back. Sliding round to caress her thigh. Her hands tangled harder in his hair as his touch became rougher. His fingers slowly crawled up her thigh, rucking up and bunching her dress in his hands. Until he was able to reunite his palm with the blazing silk of her thigh. If she merely gasped before. She practically screamed now.

"I should be so terribly affronted. That you're merely using me to get even with your philandering ex-fiancé... But. I think of all the situations, mine is turning out to be the sweetest..."

His hand traveled the once familiar route up her leg, onto greater pastures at the apex of those lovely, _supple_ thighs of hers.

"...Because if you were. I'd be _no_ sort of decent gentleman to let you miscarry such a _worthwhile task_..." Came the low growl in her ear as his fingers met with the juncture of where her leg met her hip.

Vianne whimpered again. Clutching hard onto the back of his head. Sliding her fingers to knot into his hair as she offers her lips to him again. _He claims them swiftly_. His hand leaving fire where he touched. One hand up her skirts, and the other making an obvious show of cradling her head. In a way, she thought idly, that would be _so painfully_ obvious to anyone sat opposite them. Able to watch Thomas run his hands all over her. Loving her with his touch. Caressing her body, making her feel alive in his arms.

_And no touch from Mr. St. Clair had ever left her so breathless._

"I _need you Vianne... I want you. I want my wife back..."_ He urges. And Vianne finds words that she never thought she'd hear herself say, come slipping out from between her lips. Her voice hoarse from passion and longing for him.

"I want my husband back. Thomas... _If you'll have me, again..."_ She gasps. She bites back a moan as his teeth sink into her neck.

"It would be _my pleasure..."_ He sighs in a smile. Into her throat. His heart _singing_ in joy.

 

 

~

 


	7. Two Years Ago

  

 

~

 

She had a _plan_.

She lay in bed and night. Alone. Huddled under the cold sheets in a clammy sweat. Going over _every single_ detail of it.

Turning it over and over in her head. Fretting over every minuscule aspect of it. Drifting off to sleep as she fretted about it. Staring up at the gloomy ceiling. Ignoring the way the menacing skull on the headboard glowered it's grimacing sneer at her.

She remembers first seeing the grotesque carving sat there, sneering, as she prepared for their wedding night. She couldn't help but feel it was an appropriate, grisly reminder of the impending doom of her nuptials. An eerie warning. " _All hope to be abandoned ye who enter here. Beware new Bride to the house of Sharpe."_ There would _always_ be eyes watching down over her. Surveying her and Thomas. Even in their bridal suite. Vianne always felt like they were within sight of _unknown voyeurs._ Eyes peering through keyholes. Looking on at them from the shadows, in between cracks in the ceiling floorboards from above.

Her first few months at Allerdale it felt like all she did was spend time peering over her shoulders...

Nonetheless. She stuck _steadfast_ to her plot.

Vianne knew it was what _had_ to be done.

She couldn't stay in this house and let them continue making her miserable, and scared for another minute. She feared for her life every minute of every day. And she couldn't stand it any longer. Lucille had slackened her iron grip on Thomas and her movements, their kinship provided a mutual balance of trust upon the wedded couple. Vianne had seen for herself the shift in Lucille's fascination and obsession with her brother. She let her guard down where Thomas was concerned, and that, would prove to be Vianne's _golden window_ of opportunity. And she would be a _fool_ not to take it.

She _hated_ having to do it. But, regrettably, she was _desperate_. She sabotaged a small piece of Thomas's clay mining machine. Shearing off a few screw-heads here and there. Weakening a fan belt so it frayed and snapped. This would mean he would have to order spare parts, and collect them from the post office in town.

Vianne had idly mentioned at dinner one night when he brought it up, that she would go with him to town. For she had ordered some new sheet music for Lucille, and some books for herself from the small bookkeepers emporium. She was both delighted and scared by the way Lucille was perfectly at ease with the concept of their leaving. She smiled her slight smile, and sipped her wine as she told them to have a good outing. Vianne almost wanted her to make it harder, to scream, threaten them, and throw things. because she was so unnerved by how _easy_ it was. That way it would cleanse her of the gut-knawing guilt that was rotting her away inside. Because what Lucille didn't know was that she was literally then assigning her leave to _walk right out_ of hers and Thomas's life.

She was relieved to see now that the snow was falling heavier and heavier as the night went on. When the morning came, it was inches high. Vianne felt querulous as she rose, and dressed. And made her way down the creaking, decaying old staircase - _for one last time she reminds herself_ \- her nervousness lay cold, clogging up her throat. Her fear making her pale hands tremble.

Today was the day that everything was to be set in motion. On her long walks outdoors, she'd come across and over time, curried favour with a tenant farmer, he had delivered a meagre carpet-bag, with only some of her clothes, some money, and very few personal belongings safely tucked inside, to the post office in town. So as not to _arouse suspicion._ Everything else she'd have to forget. To leave it behind. The tenant had delivered it upon her instruction. To keep hidden well out of sight until she needed it to slip away. And Hector had told her he would have the ' _papers_ ' delivered there. And, for her, and a price, they would store those also.

Vianne walked down to the breakfast room. And saw Lucille at the dining room table. Sipping tea. Silently waiting for others to join her. Vianne fidgeted with her hands. Dressed as usual in her blue velvet gown. It's hem and sleeves were frayed and it had needed repairing and altering since the start of the previous century. She sat the the murky, watery half light of the gloomy kitchen. Vianne twisted her gloved hands restlessly. Adjusted her blue day hat, and smoothed down the outer folds of her dark bottle-green, velvet coat.

"Is there _anything_ I could fetch you back from town, Lucille?" She enquires. Trying not to let her voice wobble. As she stood and reached for a cup of tea. Drinking it did _nothing_ to soothe her. The milk turned sour in her mouth. And the tea leaves tasted bitter. It did nothing to calm her squirming stomach.

The stoic woman surveyed Vianne slowly. Her eyes narrowed and her smile twitches. Pursing her lips wider.

"Just both your safe returns. Don't take the carriage out in snow. You'll _freeze_ to death. If it snows. Stay in town." She warns coldly. But with concern on her face. Vianne nods. Trying not to look as timorous as she felt. There came a clattering of china as her shaky hand lowered the cup back to its brittle saucer. Lucille seemed to fixate on that.

" _Besides_... If I know my brother. He'll _relish_ getting you alone _all to himself."_ She speaks. Eyeing Vianne with a small smug smirk. She watched the Sharpe bride blush at the other meaning to her statement.

"Everything _alright?"_ She asks with barely any emotion flickering across that stony face. Her eyes were razor sharp. She never missed a thing, Vianne had learnt that within seconds of meeting her.

"Thankyou. I'm _quite well._ " Vianne smiles. "I am... _Excited_ to get my...new books.." She beamed. "And your sheet music. Stacks of it. Chopin. Satie. Mozart. Handel..." She lists with an eager smile. A smile that felt _wrong_. Right down from the very core of her. From the tips of her toes to the top of her head. _She felt false._ And it was all she could do to not let her face betray it. Prickling all over with the effort to try and hide it. Keep is shielded from the sharp, omnipotent eyes of Lucille.

"And I know Thomas will be relieved to get his machinery parts..." She gabbled idly in addition. Nodding. Her mouth unusually dry. Her hands clammy under her leather gloves. They squeaked when she wrung her hands together.

"Truly you look _pale_. Vianne. Maybe you should stay _here_ and let my brother go to town alone..." Lucille threatened. Those hard eyes narrowed to acidic slits. Coldness was her way. It was far more than she'd gotten from her when she first moved in here. There was concern, buried somewhere under the impenetrable hostility. When Vianne first came. She barely spoke to her _except_ in anger.

 _"No_." Vianne snapped. Softening her blurted words with a stretched smile. "I Thank you for your concern. But I _am... Fine._ Excellent even. I am looking forward to getting my hands on those new books..." She lies swallowing anxiously. Lucille takes the words in with a nod. A slow. Curious. Worrying. Nod.

I _just.... I_ Wanted to say..." Vianne began. Her expression earnest. She met Lucille's eyes and could see there was confusion and the beginnings of annoyance crossing her features. She blinked, wetting her lips. Summoning her words. She floundered. She wanted to say... _Something_. But. She knew she had to _try_ and not give anything away. She almost does. She wants to yell. _To scream it to the rotten rafters._ But then she rethinks. All of what was at stake. She couldn't risk that... She would _not_ fail herself.

" _Hopefully_ we'll be back for dinner." Is what she settles on. Weak as it was. Those were her last words spoken to Lucille Sharpe.

Before she turns and smiles meekly at the approaching sound of Thomas. As he came bounding down the stairs, striding excitedly across to her. His gloved hand reaching to his wife's waist. Grinning that beaming, affable smile at her. Top hat on. Old, weathered Blue coat lapping at his knees. The rest of him clad in black. Boots. Breeches. And his best cotton white shirt with that onyx silk waistcoat.

" _Ready?_ The coach is anticipating us..." He smiles at her. She returned his eagerness. She looked at Lucille. One _last time_. Before she headed for the door. Thomas nods at his sibling. And while Vianne slips away. She hears Lucille speak haunting words to her brother, ringing out after her in her wake.

"Be sure to take _good care_ of your Bride. Brother." She tells him stonily.

She didn't glance behind to see the familiar dark, gothic foyer. Snow still leaking in from the broken ceiling. The red-clay soaked floorboards that left her shoes bloody. The dust of flakes settling on the polished black wood of the Broadwood grand piano. All those stiff, polished, glowering, centuries of ugly, hook nosed, elderly Sharpe oil-portraits brooding, peering down over her with disdain, from their gilded gold frames. She doesn't look back. Because she wouldn't miss it.

She heads out into the bitter cold. It bites at her cheeks, tugs at her hair. The wind relentless as it keeps hounding her. She ignores it. Head down. Fighting tears, she treads through the snow. And gets into the creaking carriage. Thomas sliding in by her side, not two paces behind her.

When he shuts the door with a heavy, resounding clank. She blinks. _Flinching_. She didn't want to look up at the hideous, deformed, gothic facade of her _'home'_ looming up like a jagged, misshapen creature out of the snow. feeling nothing but the sheer weight of her nerves, and the heady guilt of ill-deserved relief. She looks ahead. Desperately holding back tears. Not looking at the house. Or at her husband.

Because looking back, she _just_  knows, it _would break_ her.

  
~

  
As it turns out, exactly as Vianne had hoped. By the time their business in town concludes, with Thomas at the foundry, and she at the local book emporium. When they make it back to the mews. The snow was knee deep. They had to roll over to the elements and admit defeat. And the kind gentleman behind the post office counter offers them the small, cosy room above the place before they close. Vianne felt her first sigh of relief seeing her husband gladly spring up the stairs before her. She made nervous eye contact with the gentleman. Nodding in silent confirmation, he reached under the desk, and proceeded to hand her the ill-fated letter, she took it, feeling the dread of having it in her hands.

_Solid. Real. So very horribly real._

Before she slides away. She picks her feet up, holds her skirts out of her way and treads up the creaking stairs to join her... _husband_.

The night wears on, and with the fire blazing in the hearth, and the cascade of snow battering the square, petite frost bitten window, it is a serene, lost atmosphere that Vianne let's herself relax in. A small, warm, humble world. Just her and Thomas. In companionable, indulgent silence.

They could hear nothing but the snow outside rage incessantly at the roof. Battering the windows. It was odd how snow was the one weather element that seemed to blot out sound. Cushioning everything in blanketed and muffled silence. And slowing the world around it to an unnaturally slow pace. Snow felt cosy, like an encroaching compatriot. Away from the despair, mournfulness and bitter cold of Allerdale's gloom, the snow seemed to feel a more tender surrounding. Accompanying the blizzard, the roar and spit of the log fire serves as an underlying symphony of calm, snug warmth. The amber golden glow bathing the room. And the man and wife sat within.

She sat, her legs folded up under her, in the armchair by the fire, flicking through her new book. Her copper hair woven, and tied with a white ribbon, in a plait. Her body was draped in a dressing gown that had obviously been designed for a male frame. It had been hanging on the back of the door, and as she had taken off her outer clothes and boots, leaving them to dry by the fire it would have to suffice. She was left in just her plain chemise, and the male dressing gown that smelt like musty wood and pipe tobacco.

Thomas was sat on the cramped desk opposite the room. He too having shed his heavier, snow-soaked layers. His coat was folded across the clothes rack, tangled and twisted with hers, in front of the fire. Left now in his bare feet, with white shirt and black breeches. She looked up from her book, surveying him idly. Seeing him frown as he concentrated on his business papers. She understood that he recently had a commission to design a new breaking system for steam train carriages. That kept him unusually busy these days. He looked like a pinned insect sat there. His elongated limbs trapped, contorted to fit around the confines of the minuscule desk. Like a gangling giant, making gentle use of a dollhouse implement.

She bit her lip and stoically turned her eyes back to her book. Turning over the page to continue. Seeming to feel the weight of her gaze land on him, he looked up just as she looked away. Watching her bite that rosy lower lip. Fussing with the chest of her gown, wiping a hand across her dewy forehead. He tilted his head. He now noticed her cheeks were flushed too. And she hadn't been enjoying her evening brandy of an evening. The bowls of broth they'd been offered earlier she _barely_ picked at. She had been awfully reticent of late. He felt crestfallen when he thought of his misgivings about spending more of his time with her. Recently work had been stealing most, _if not all,_ of his attentions.

He put his pen down. And unleashed his arms and legs from being cramped at the  
diminutive dimensions of the tiny writing bureau, and stretched his aching back to come up to his full height once more.

"Are you _alright? Vianne?_ You seem flushed..." He remarks as he strolls over across to her. Crouching to his knees in front of her. One long fingered hand splaying intimately to cover the bare silk of her kneecap.

She looks up at him. Startled by his rumbling voice shattering the silence of their little room. She blinks and opens her mouth. Shutting her book. She smiles. And he sees it is meek. "I'm _fine_..." She promises. " _Over warm_ I suppose..." She concludes. His fingers stroked fondly down, onto the soft cushion of her calf.

"You seem... rather _taciturn_ of late, my dear. I do hope there's nothing _wrong?"_ He asks. Looking up at her with those eyes that melted her heart. That fine, carved face that gave her comfort to see it smile and gaze softly with love at her.

"I know I am guilty of spending _too little_ time with you my love. And for that I am sorry. Work has been relentless. But do please believe me. I'd much rather spend hours in your _delectable hold_ than in the presence of business..." He coos sensually. Leaning up to press a kiss to her cheek. Feeling her heated skin radiate under the embrace of his cool lips.

Both hands now rested on her knees. Stroking her soothingly. Feeling the weight of quilted silk glide under his palms. He smiled at the masculine attire of the gown she wore. It hunched wide, sagging outwards at her shoulders, intended to swathe a bulkier body, and he saw that it reached past her knuckles. It was a deep scarlet red. And not as supple as feminine dressing gowns. He adored something silly about seeing her petite frame, swaddled in gentleman's wear.

"It's _alright_. My dear. Your work must take precedence. I _understand that_." She insists. Placing her book down the side of her chair. Laying it aside.

"While that _may be_ , I have missed _my wife.._." He purrs. That secret, lustful, dark look creeping onto his face. His smile was sensuous. He reached over and plucked both her pale hands into his. He brought them both up to his lips. And closed his eyes as he pressed a kiss to the back of the both of them.

Afterwards, keeping her gaze in his, he brings her up, encouraging her to stand. Pulling her out of the chair. And before she can protest, he takes her place in it, and tugs her to drape across his lap. Her delightful bottom tucked into his hip, and her legs folded over his thigh.

He slid her plait out of his path and snuggled into her neck. Pressing the tip of his nose into the hot thrum of her throbbing pulse. Smelling that French perfume lingering on her skin. Moaning a soft exhale in male, growling appreciation as he kissed down her throat. Her toes squirmed pleasurably at the flutter of his eyelashes swiping to feather against her sensitive neck. Her largest weakness.

She stiffened before she softened, melting into him. This was the first time he'd been affectionate in weeks. Always he was affable. _But distant._ They eloped. Had their wedding night. And their lives fell into a pattern after that.

He spent all night in the attic tinkering on his inventions. She spent her days walking, reading, embroidering. Entertaining and coping with Lucille in equal measure. By the time she retired to bed. Falling dead asleep. She wouldn't even hear him come to join her. And when she got up the next morning. The bed would be cold and empty. She discovered her Thomas was an odd sort of creature who didn't sleep much, or require frequent rest. He always found something new and different to fix, or mend to keep him occupied. And she, in time, grew used to having an absentee husband.

She altered to being a woman who was used to teaspoons of her spouses affection, sparsely dotted throughout her week. A chaste, brief kiss on the cheek, or the forehead to tide her over for days on end. Apart from consummating their marriage, they'd been intimate barely a handful of times. And _all_ of them upon his initiation. She was _too timid_ to suggest it. And he always complained of how busy he was to commit to other pastimes. She had let that lie. She wasn't _brave enough_ to try and _seduce_ him into _bed_.

There were however, outliers. Odd mornings or dawns when she woke to him sliding her nightdress up over her thighs. Gaining access to all of her. At first she considered it to be no more than an erotic dream, until she shifted her legs, and opened her eyes to see him there. His long fingers curled into her thighs, his nose nudging into her cleft as he devoured her sex with his lips and his tongue. She'd watch him through hooded eyes, softly groaning his name and gasping through her pleasure. After he grew satiated with the taste of her, and the subsequent climaxes he indulged onto her, he'd crawl up her body like a feral wildcat. Paying more attention to her stomach, her navel, her breasts, and he'd kiss her and make her forget she was sleepy.

He'd entwine their bodies as one and make her breathless again. _Stroking. Savouring._ And _cupping_ handfuls of her _perfect_ body in his grip. Not letting her go. Driving them both to ecstasy as _many_ times as he could manage. Then, they'd sleep, entwined. He'd whisper soft, tender words of heartfelt love into her ears. And she'd rest. Warm. And loved in his arms. Curled into his sinewy, strong body. Adoring his all-male musculature under her hands. But then. When she woke. She'd be _alone_. More tortured by the fleeting bout of passion and happiness that he taunted her with. Then left her reeling. In solitude. _Once again_.

One of the rare time's when It had happened. Vianne swore she heard the landing floorboards outside their bedchamber squeak and whine. And the doorknob rattle. She turned her head to look. But Thomas had then decided to move his tongue in the most enticing pattern across her sex, eliciting a lightning bolt of pleasure to wrack through her, making her gasp, her head thrown back to the pillow. Her attention as to whom was lurking beyond the door sharply forgotten as her husband opened her supple thighs wider, tugging her body closer, up to his mouth to better feast on her. Those carnal blue eyes enjoying ravaging her naked body as she writhed and arched in his arms. Crying her release into his sinful lips.

Later on that fateful night, Vianne was getting out of the bath, she leaned over, naked, to unplug it and let the water drain away, and when she rounded the screen, still glistening wet, her damp hair clinging to her shoulders. When she rounded said screen to cross the room and fetch her robe and a towel, she gasped and stood stock still. Scared out of her skin.

Because Lucille stood in the bathroom doorway.

Glaring at her as she stood utterly bare. The woman's blood red gown making her pale, livid face stand out all the more as she stood there, boldly assessing Vianne's plainly naked body.

She felt _mortified_. She had locked the bathroom door _for heavens sake._ But she could see the set of iron keys clutched tight in her clenched fist. She blushed and, gaping, her hands flew up to cover herself. She watched the woman's eyes settle on her hips. Her stomach. Looking at her breasts and legs, and also her intimate parts, as she fought to hide them from her sight.

A few long seconds passed. And the woman's eyes _didn't leave_ her body. She manages to stutter something out. But flinches when her sister-in-law lunged forwards and hurled Vianne's dressing gown at her feet. As she narrowed her eyes. Revolted. And hisses _"You're disgusting."_ At the woman with unveiled hatred, before she stormed out of the bathroom and away down the dark hall. Evaporating back into the dark and the shadows. Vianne stood there. Shocked and hurt. Feeling the icy nip of the air bite cruelly at her cooling skin. Just as Lucille's bitterness had done.

She didn't tell Thomas. _She couldn't._ She was worried by the lust and rancor in equal measure that she had seen in Lucille's expression.

She put it _out_ of her mind. Right then. In his embrace. In the quiet post office, cuddled close to him in the wing backed chair. Fighting hard not to just break down. Crumble away, be weak, and disintegrate into uselessness, and let loose all the secrets she had bottled up. She briefly considered suggesting the idea of their running away. But Thomas would never leave Lucille. _She knew that_. And in a way, nor could she ever ask him too. They were family first. And whatever love he held for her, he held just as dearly for his sister. She wanted to tell him why. She was itching to let her secrets come forth. She wanted them to _pour_ out of her like a cascade. _To let him know. Yet...._ She doesn't make _a single sound._

She just smiles, remaining as cowardly _as ever_ she was. Her breath hitches as his lips tickle that sensitive skin under her ear. He took great delight in making her squirm in pleasure. She could feel his body taut under her back. The rigid muscle of his chest, and the firm manly thighs under her own. She could feel his breathing become huskier as his hands sought to explore her even more. She tingles, smiling at his affections being so unusually ardent towards her.

"You're _so very lovely,_   _Vianne_..." He rasps to her in a veneration. 

He gave her a body encompassing squeeze. Drawing her close. Tilting her head back to cup her throat, and slowly leaning in, teasing her, smirking with the concept of tantalising her with his lips. Before he finally grants her the thrill of it. Slowly. Erotically. His fingers sneak up her neck, sinking into her hair. Tugging gently to pull her close as he solidly kisses her.

She dissolves into his arms. Letting the kiss grow wilder, feeling her arousal amassing, stemming from deep down in the very core of her. His hands rake into her. One long fingered hand digging down into her thigh. The other pressing her head to tilt his way, so he could nibble at, and claim those _luscious_ lips for his own. She surrenders to the merciless of his _sensational_ kiss, she groans, slowly, a long drawn out sound, mingled with a sigh, breaking from his addictive lips as she feels his fingers pull the gown out of the way, up and over her hip, allowing easy access for his fingers to dance under the hem of her chemise, drag through the thatch of curls, and sneak down to tantalise the tender, velvet lips of her sex. Already weeping from his attentions.

Her hips buck, and her legs shift in his lap as she pulls away from the kiss, simply to moan. Meeting his eyes. He grinned across her, looking _hungry_ and desirous of granting her _plenty_ of pleasure before the night was through.

His lips stayed hovering an inch away from her own. Watching her, as his fingers dipped, and swirled and explored her in effective patterns. Coaxing bursts of delicious ecstasy to shudder through her body, as she stroked her in the most intimate of ways. Her hands, seeking something to grab, those too he guides. One he could see was grabbing onto the arm of the chair in a sturdy clutch. S _o hard_ her knuckles _were white._ The other with his free hand, he steers to be useless. Lifeless, limp at her side, tucking between their bodies so she could be allowed to feel his own arousal stirring under her hand. His wandering hand slid round her body to cup one perfect breast, cradling it in the arc of his hand. Of which her bosom seemed to fit _precisely_ into. Her head fell back onto his shoulder, her knees shivering, pressing together to alleviate the pleasure coming from his talented fingers. When both his long appendages sink deeper, she cries _loudly_. An unexpected outburst of pleasure.

"I _want you, Thomas. I need you in me..."_ She whines. Begging. Arching in bliss, her free hand clutching the back of his, holding on tight, to his knuckles that were wedged down between her warm, fleshy thighs.

"No... _No_ , _my pet."_ He rasps, kissing her neck as she looked down on her body. Watching her writhe and shift under him. "I want _to watch you_ climax." He presses. Building the pressure and speed of his fingers. Curling against her inner walls, flicking, rubbing and twirling against places that sent sparks of pleasure to shoot through her legs. His thumb slipping in unrelenting circles over the tight little pearl that so skilfully drives her to lusting madness.

His other re-twined through her hair, bringing her lips to his to smother her in his sensual kiss. She could feel him at her back now. The long, rigid length of his arousal pressing into her soft ass. When she arches her back, and shifts against him. On purpose. He hisses a groan out through gritted teeth. Breaking the kiss, resting his forehead against her own. Uttering a growl of " _Vixen_." Against her mouth.

He could feel her thighs start to tremble. And his hand was forced to rip her legs open to gain more access as she starts to tumble over the sweet, heady precipice of her pleasure. Her breathing now ragged. Her cheeks and chest pink with heat and passion. Which he sees the better of, as he tears down her chemise to pool at her waist. Seeing her dewy, flushed chest. Her sweet, rosy nipples erect. He wants to take them in his mouth _so badly,_ _he could feel himself salivate._ He wets his dry lips, and palms at her sensitive breast again, abandoning the silk of her leg. Now he can hear the slick, sloppy sound of his fingers driving in and out of her hot, dripping, wet sex. _That too drives him wild._

She groans his name as the shuddering stops. But then she goes still, _so still,_ he wondered if he'd _hurt_ her, but then she rises and arches and he feels her contract and quiver around his fingers. He feels a new gush of wetness coat his already slick fingers. And then her breathing slows, and softens. Her grip on the armchair goes slack. And she tilts her head back to rest it on the sturdy perch of his shoulder.

He could feel his own ardor twitch, throb, and _yearn_ to seek after and invade the place his fingers had just been. His lips find her flushed neck, and he closes his eyes, savouring the radiating heat beaming off her. The wild tick of her pulse under his lips. He presses a slow, open mouthed kiss there. Enjoying the warmth, passion and lust that was flooding her body. Lust for _him. No one else. No other man would ever see her like this._ All rosy, skin ablaze with lust. Purring his name as she sank down from the high of her climax. He gladly licks the essence of her off his hand. Tasting that _sweet_ , salt and musk of her arousal. It makes him _desperate_ to crawl between her legs and drink her in to aid in another completion. But he was too aroused now, _not_ to claim her. 

He can't _resist_ her like this. He scoops her up in his arms. Carries her to the bed, and strips her of the men's gown, and pulls that demure chemise up and over her head. He quickly divests himself of his own clothing, and she helps.

They embrace, with her fully naked. And he still in his breeches, he adores the feel of her soft, hot skin under his palms. She can taste the warm salt of herself on his tongue. And it is inherently erotic. He dragged his hands up her back. Over the rigid bump of her shoulder blades. His lips ravenous on her neck, hearing her mewl for him. She boldly takes the lead.

She flips them around so it was he below, and her on top. She helps guide his breeches off down his legs. And takes the long, velvet, taut length of him in her mouth. Watching him groan above her, his head thrown back to the pillows. _Gasping_. Those burning blue eyes watching her perfect lips slide and suck up and down on his erection. She adored the male salt and musk of him. The taste sitting _heavy_ on her tongue. She knew it wasn't coquettish to give a man pleasure in such a way. But he looked _so divine. She couldn't not._

When he can't take the blissful torture of watching her pleasure him anymore. He reaches for her and brings her up onto his lap, stroking himself before he sinks into her, deep. Watching her moan up above him. He drags her hips to slide forwards and back over his length, sheathed in her tight, wonderful heat. She had both her hands pressed to his sinewy chest. Lifting up and sinking back onto him in a quickened frenzy. He watches her cry his name along with gods. Reddened from ecstasy, her plait mussed. He reaches to grab those full, heavy breasts that spill over, in his large grip.

Vianne feels him move so fast she can barely register it. She sees nothing but an amber blur, and then her head hits the snowy pillows below. He rolls atop her. Driving into her _deep_. Holding her fleshy, rounded thighs up over his hips as he goes _hell for leather._ His pace a punishing brute of pleasure. Rocking into her, sending waves of delight to scorch her body. He watched her breasts jolt with each thrust. And leans close, his chest rubbing hers as he bites at her neck. Scraping his teeth over her throat as he hands grapple for his back. Her hears her cry his name. _Loudly_. One digging into the globe of his ass. Feeling a jolt of possessive womanly-pleasure as she felt the muscle tighten and contract beneath her fingers as he lunges into her. His breath scorching her neck as he gasps her name into her ear.

"You're _so tight_ for me. Pet. Always _so tight for me. Oh._  How I'm going to _fill you up_ when I cum..." He promises dirtily into her ear. His voice strained and hoarse as he was blissfully close. And he could feel her ravenously sucking at him. Robbing him of _everything_ he had to give. Her muscles quiver and he could feel his tumescent self throb and ache with the sensation of approaching his release.

" _You're mine_ Vianne. Your pleasure. _Your groans. Your body_. It _is mine. You belong only to me._ And I want you to come undone with me. _Here. Now_. Come _undone for your husband..."_ He mouths onto her neck. She reaches up, groaning, and kissing him as she reaches her last. And so does she. They groan and writhe together. Rocking and shuddering out the last few pangs of heady delight that swarm their bodies. Bursting through every pore. They're entwined together. Collapsed in a dewy, flushed, tangle of limbs and sated lust.

She sighs, feeling his hair brush her collarbone as he presses kisses to her heaving breasts. He could see, feel and hear her heart pound under her skin. She tangles her hands in the inky tresses. Curling her fingers through the raven twines. When he speaks. His lips are almost muffled against her hot skin. His voice was gravel and smoke. Scraping through his vocal chords. 

"Sometimes I wish we could just leave this godforsaken place. Away from the snow. That damned vermillion clay. And that rotting old house..." He sighs. She doesn't know what to say to him. He looks up at her. From somewhere near her navel. He watches his own thumbs brush against her hipbones first before making eye contact.

"I want to be free of such... _Misery._ I want, a perfect haven for you and I. For us, _and just us,_ to be together..." Then he scoffs. "But I know it _can never be_..." He remarks. Looking down once more at her thighs. Watching the firelight dance across her supple skin with its reaching, amber fingers. _"Not whilst..."_ He sighs. She knew exactly what words, whose name, he had not said.

She sits up and collects him into her arms, pulling him to lay his head down on her soft, welcoming chest. She kisses his dewy forehead. Her nose tickling that onyx mane. Inhaling the manly scent if his. Essence of peppermint, and shaving soap.

"Then let tonight be a... A snippet of _such a haven."_ She tells him. He nuzzles into her skin and bosom, looking as vulnerable and scared as a child. Yet she knew he was nothing but a strong, ardent male. He closes those pale eyelids. His lashes cast a spidery shadow down his cheek from the fires light. That carved face relaxed in rest.

Vianne swallows. Watching him. Stroking her fingers to trace invisible patterns on his clammy skin.

She bid him to sleep. And be at ease. And she savours him in her hold. Because _tomorrow_ , as she'd carefully planned. _She was going to break his heart_.

  
~

 

 


	8. Opera: Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Up to No Good - Hoosiers

 

 

~

 

Vianne had a _very hard_ time keeping herself focused on the opera for the rest of the evening. Reluctantly she slid her shaking knees back to her own seat. But she was not the same. For her chest and face was flushed hot pink, her lips stained by the bruising force of his kiss, and her hair mussed.

She could sense Thomas too was trying to re-engage himself in the opera too. But almost every minute, she could feel his eyes settle on her. Dark with lust. Watching her wet her lips as her own passionate eyes caught his. Sending a shiver of heat to plough through her body. Her entire being clenches and she cannot deny any further, how much she wants this man. And judging by the way he cannot keep his eyes off her, his own feelings found the same, demanding, consuming symmetry as hers.

She feels his breath at her neck again. And his words are among one of the sweetest things she's ever heard in all her life. She pants at his words. Her eyes shuddering closed in pure bliss. And she was eternally glad that he said it first. Cause she was squirming in trying to find the words.

"I think I've seen _quite enough_ of Don Giovanni to sustain me for _one_ evening..." He rasps onto her neck. Insinuating exactly what she needed him to insinuate.

She couldn't stop looking from his piercing, hot, eyes. To those handsome, kissable lips.

"My sentiments _exactly_..." She manages to gasp back.

In odes to the passion and intimacy of their once, briefly, close-knit marriage. _They don't_ _need to say the words._ It was all in _the look,_ the gleam, in their eyes. The lust. The furious longing. Perhaps all the stronger by being separated for two whole years. If it was some niggling, little, inconsequential need, maybe they could have quelled it. Let it lie. But the fever of longing had _sunk in deep_. Clawing in with tooth and nail to stay. Deep in their guts, they _both_ felt it. That driving. _Un-ignorable_ need that _had_ to be quenched. For two years of lifelessness, celibacy, and loneliness was _crushing_ for a man. And the same amount from her, in agonising solitude, and now with the disappointment of having a Lothario of a man almost as her husband, Being able to sate her desires with the man to whom her heart _truly belonged, was almost overwhelming._

He devours her with his eyes as he takes her hand, they both rise to their feet and stride quickly away from the box. Together, they sweep through the theatre, the thundering, orchestral aria from the stage providing the soundtrack to their speedy steps as they claim their coats. And practically ran out of the theatre. Across the crimson carpets of the exquisite golden foyer, and through the torch lit doors. Out into the foggy, smog filled, typical, London night.

In a display that would have most Edwardian social mores _utterly_ disgusted, When they get to the street, Thomas takes her in his arms, wrapping them around her, tugging her into his body, the folds of his coat enveloping her as his arms surely were. Squeezing her tight, he kisses her again. His arms gripping her waist and the back of her head as he tastes her delectable lips once more. Cupping her body. _That body that he'd missed being able to cradle in love and lust._ The body he'd sinfully, and shamefully ignored. But tonight. He intended to _show her_ , all the ways in which he was _sorry_ for such a betrayal. He intended to _show_ her all the sorrows of his remorse. To take her in his arms, and _not_ let her go until she forgave him.

"Where shall we _go?"_ He asks against her lips when they break away. But not putting any distance between them. He cups her head and stroked her hair. Holding her near. She pressed her hands against his chest. Savouring the crisp softness of his black overcoat under her palms. The solid, lean, male muscle that made his chest under her touch. 

She has trouble catching her breath from the fierce lust he unleashes on her. His breath fluttering hot against her lips. His eyes making her swoon. She was fairly certain that if he wasn't holding her up, caressing her body, then she'd crumple to the cobbles below. She could feel now how her body was arching into him. Keen and eager for the sensations she remembered he could give her. The _pleasure_ he could grant. She also craved the intimacy of him. From the one man who _truly_ made her heart beat in longing.

"I _still_ have my _suite_ at the Ritz." He whispers into her ear as he leans close to passionately sample the delicious skin at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. She is sorely tempted to indulge in his wish.

"... _Or_. I have the house to myself tonight. The staff are... _Out_..." She explains in a breathy exhale as his lips refocus themselves on her own. Making her shiver, moaning wantonly into his mouth. His fingers tangled in the back of her hair. And his hips keenly arched into her now. She could feel that he too was strained under the same form of lusting mania. The same one that was heating up her blood aswell.

He smirked at that news, his eyes positively _feral_ , as he claims her lips again. Making her insides squirm and flutter with his grinning insinuation. She feels his hand entwine in hers, and when he pulls away he takes her arm in his, pulls her body close, so their sides touch. And he softly reaches to skim a stray coil of hair off her cheek.

" _Lead the way,_ my beauty..." He intones. His voice a seductive rasp. She struggled to breathe as his clever, clever, involved fingers snuck up the sleeve of her coat and danced a wicked pattern on her ticklish wrist. Just like that, he had found another spot to tantalise _so effortlessly._

She gasps and bites her lip. Heat flooded her cheeks, as they walked along, feeling all the more potent and obvious in the bitter cold of the evening. And of course, his eyes raking over her caught her reaction. Those gleaming, _Sharpe_ , eyes never missed _a thing._ And they also were capable of hosting a veritable spectrum of things. _Those eyes could project and speak a thousand things all at once. Those eyes she had missed._

They head across the street, seeking an empty hackney carriage to take then to a Great Russell street. And after a search, they begin up the next street, through an alleyway to the adjacent road they find one. Cutting through the dark, dirty brick alleyway seems to work fine. Until three large, strapping figures block their path. Their previous bubble of lust and intimacy bursts, and the cold, harsh reality of danger sets in once more.

Vianne recoils a little. Her eyes wide with nerves and fear. Thomas does no such thing. His eyes harden, like the bite of frost, and narrow at the people who were blocking their way. Her hand clutches harder at his. Gripping him _tight_ in her impending uneasiness. He breathes calmly as he glared daggers to the three men before them. Vagrants. By the looks of their shabby, dirty coats, cracked leather boots and flat caps. The one on the left wore a black eye and a bowler hat, and the one stood to the right, had a flat cap and was busy making a _sleazy_ evaluation of her as she cowered next to him.

" _Well, well."_ One Irish brogued voice drawls at them both in mockery. "Lost are ya? _Mi'lord_?" The one in front of them sneers. With a flash of his rotten toothed smile, and his rugged, brawny features. His hands were shoved deep down in his pockets. But then he pulls out a small, gleaming pocketknife. The sound of it flicking open makes Vianne blink and _flinch_ backwards. Thomas could feel her curl closer to his side as the one on the left stepped towards her.

Thomas assesses the situation with a flicker of his narrow, _icy_ eyes. They were all more muscled than he was. But he was more than their adversary in height. But. The odds of him against three were _slim... Slim indeed._

But his blood was starting to _boil_. If they so much as laid _one finger_ on Vianne in harm or violence. He didn't like to _think_ of the _white-hot, fierce, rage_ he would be capable of mustering.

"Let us _pass safely_ to the next street.... And we'll say _no more_ about it..." Thomas bargains lowly. Eyes flitting between all three of them. " _No one gets harmed.."_ He added dangerously.

This made the knife wielding one sneer. And his friends cackled too. The both of them now assessing Vianne. Their lecherous eyes devouring parts of her body that was on offer beyond the cover of her coat.

"You're not being _very nice_ for a gentleman.." The middle one drawls. Inching closer to Thomas. Who met his eyes bravely. And he didn't retreat. "I _know how_ to use this. So I'd be a _lot more polite_ if I were you..." He began to snarl.

"You've got _a nerve_..." Thomas scoffs.

Vianne grabbed his arm in terror, letting out a small exclamation as the man pressed the tip of the knife to rest on the front of Thomas's waistcoat.

" _Gimme_ your wallet. Or I'll dig this into you a _lot deeper_. And you won't be so _cocky_ then, _will ya?"_ He sneered, leaning closer so Thomas could smell his foul breath, addled with drink and decay.

"I'm not giving you _a thing._ I Especially make a point of _not_ giving my belongings to armed _cowards_ who threaten mine, and a lady's _life and safety_..." He growled to the vagrant. The sneer that resulted from Thomas's speech was truly a _terrifying thing indeed._

"Well. That's a _great pity_. Cause if you don't give up, your belongings. We'll simply have to _take them. Won't we lads?"_ He leers.

Before Thomas could so much as move to grab Vianne. The squalid figure to the right of his attacker sprang forwards and flattened Vianne to the brick wall beside them. The shout of pain coming from her lips is one of the _single most awful things_ Thomas has _ever_ heard.

" _No! Vianne!_ You get your _filthy hands OFF HER!"_ He shouts. But this only seemed to make his aggressor more angry.

He lunged for her. He tried. But the man before him tugged his collar and pulled them almost nose to nose. He still fought to twist round, not taking his eyes off her. The foul beast had his hand yanking into her red hair, arching her head right back against the wall, and was savagely trying to undo her coat as his frame dwarfed her own, and she cried, struggling against him.

"You don't give us what we want. We take it out in your... _lovely_...lady friend here... Quite a _beauty. Isn't she? Shapely. Soft... pretty_ as a bush full of _butterflies_." He intones, winding Thomas up. He didn't take his eyes off her. Her lip wobbling. Her eyes silver with unshed tears of fear.

The second guy stepped closer to her then. Sniffing her neck. Smelling her perfume and stroking her hair with his dirty, filthy hands and mucky fingernails. "She smells like a _basketful_ of roses..." He chucked. He was irish too. His voice made Thomas shudder. 

She met Thomas's eyes, trying to fight off the assailant before her as his grubby hands had managed to undo her coat, and reach for her waist and her bodice. At the sight of those large, mucky, grubby and tattooed hands reaching for her pale, white breasts under her scarlet dress, trying to tear it down as she wriggled, and fought... And with the second man steeping over to get a look in at her too... _Thomas snapped._

Quick as a viper, his hands darted for the switch-blade in the beggars hand. And he grabs both wrists and twists, pressing the mans body back in against himself. Through his weakness, he is able to pry the blade from the attackers hands, and deliver a mighty blow across his face, sending him sprawling to the alley floor below. When he gets to the second two, he pulls them off his Vianne, seeing that she hadn't been as timid as she looked. The both of them had bloody, raking, nail marks down their cheeks. He grappled his hands into one of their coats, and when the other one tried to fight him he slashed a knife across the mans stomach. Just lightly enough to leave a surface wound.

Now the other two tried to fight back, he kicks and punches and claws at them. Getting the main one by the throat, and pins him against the wall. Vianne huddled behind him. Clutching her coat around herself. Two sets of footsteps clattered away, and the other two, she saw, had legged it. 

In this light, the way Thomas looked was starting to scare her. His eyes _feral_ , his jaw set. He had a bruise on his cheek. A split lip. A knife cut on his torso. And she was sure his knuckles were bruised. His top hat had been knocked clean off. The look in his eyes was _murder_. And his anger was so _powerful,_ it was making him _tremble_.

He spat horribly into his attackers face as he spoke. He had him pinned him by the neck. Cutting off his air supply, as the mans hand clawed at his strong arms. Thomas looked at the mans gnarled, scared, gradually reddening face. He looked eerily calm. In control. But everything about him screamed otherwise. The veins _straining_ in his neck, his wild, inky, hair mussed, and blood dripping down his chin, nose and cheekbone. The man tried to jerk himself loose. _But Thomas wasn't having a single ounce of it._

"... Correct me if I'm _wrong_. But I don't think you _do know how_ to use _that knife,_ Sir. And were we not in the presence of a lady, I'd show you how, because I'd also _slit_ your throat open from ear to ear for ever daring to _lay a finger_ on _her."_ He snarls. Watching the bastards face turn from red to a bruised shade of purple as he gurgled for air. He wanted to squeeze tighter, to feel the louts neck _snap_ under his hands. _It would have been just, so....easy...._.

" _Thomas_..." Came Vianne's terrified little gasp from over his shoulder. He turned and caught her eyes. Leaking tears, her earnest, little face so _innocent_ , pure, and caring. He could never bare doing _anything_ to upset or offend her. _Not any more._

He swallowed. He remembered _why_ he'd given up on violence. It reminded him of a man whom he didn't want to be any more. The vision of Allerdale. _Rotting. The white snow. The blood red clay. Death. Misery, torture and lies._ He wasn't _that man_ anymore. His hands loosened, and he dropped the man to the floor. The attacker coughed and spluttered, rubbing his sore throat. On his hands and knees in the dirt. His other two companions had scarpered long since, scuttling off into the night after the severe beating Thomas gave them.

"You're _a lunatic.._ You could've _killed me..._ " The man croaked in fear when he relocated his voice. Looking up as Thomas glared down at him. Jaw stiff. Eyes resolute with _hatred_.

"If I wanted you _dead_. _Trust me,_ this alley would be a _lot quieter..._ " Thomas assured him. The thug was now clutching at his middle, and sporting a battered face, and bruised neck. He hurriedly scrambled to his feet, and scarpered away out of sight. Thomas threw the switch blade to the ground.

Vianne watched Thomas sag against the wall. One arm pressed to it holding him up. Vianne steps forwards and cups his face in her hands. He was cold and trembling. Whether with rage or adrenaline. She couldn't be sure. His eyes focused on her own and he looked both empathetic and angry about the fact her lovely dress that been torn at the bodice. And there was blood, and dirt, on her pale hands, and her chest. Her hem too was sodden with muck, her lovely face had smears of dirt on it. He was _livid_ to see a scratch on her lovely, pale cheek...

"Are you _hurt? God._ If they've hurt you Vianne..." He warns as he pulled her closer. Taking her into his arms.

"I'm _fine_. But I do think we need to get you bandaged and those _nasty cuts_ seen too..."

She remarks. Taking his chin in her hand, and looking at the extent of the cuts on his battered face, and ripped clothes. How blood dripped off his gaunt face. How she could see scarlet leaking from the slashed clothes at his stomach. Staining his snowy shirt. Before she could stop herself, she speaks. Taking his hand and leading them out of the alley, into the smog filled street.

"For a _moment_ there. Thomas. I thought you were... _going....to... To kill him."_ She tells him in a small, scared revelation.

Thomas pulled her into him. Wincing as he felt the cut on his stomach begin to bleed. He grit his teeth through it. Bringing his arms about her. Pressing a kiss down into her soft, red hair. Still scented of roses, her elegant coiffure had been mussed. Large sections of it draping over her coat and her pale, cream shoulders.

"From the _second_  they laid their _filthy hands_ on you, my love. _So did I."_ He confessed.

  
~

  
Not half of an hour later. Saw them in a vastly more _happy_ environment. They managed to find a cab back to her empty Townhouse. She helps him stagger up the stairs and lays him on her bed, with his stomach wound where it was, she knows he'd be more comfortable laying back. She was waving away the breech of etiquette about a single, unmarried woman allowing a man to be in her bedchamber. She smiles seeing that her faithful maid had turned down the sheets, and set a fire. Even though Vianne _had dismissed_ her for the evening

She left him to stretch out on the bed and relax. Instructing him, with a blush, to remove his waistcoat and jacket. Thomas grinned at her after she'd said it, his hands heading for his torso. Vianne swept out of the bedroom, and went to gather the necessaries to patch up, and sterilise her ex-husbands bleeding face, bloody cuts and shredded knuckles.

She fetched her medicine kit, bandages, and half a bottle of Glenrothes Vintage Malt Whiskey, and two crystal cut tumbler gasses. Returning to the bedroom, she hesitates at the door, seeing the lean, lanky, half bare man stretched back on her bed. Having shed his coat, waistcoat, tie, collar and shirt. Now half naked, the crimson stain gashed across his strong middle became _obvious_ , dripping scarlet blood over down his stomach.

She just stared... _Only for a moment._ Watching Thomas Sharpe, the pale, tall man awash in amber firelight. Reclining on her bed. As if nothing had e _ver changed._ As if they had never been estranged. Never parted. _Not even for a day._ As if they hadn't put each other through heartbreak. Misery and strife. She shook the thought away and headed into the room. Setting down her supplies on the dresser opposite.

He could hear her dress move with her body. The delicate away and swish of her tulle and satin petticoats, _rustling_ , as she walked. His eyes cling to the sway of her hips. Half her back, her shoulder blades, that were elegantly exposed by the low backed cut of her glorious red dress. The paleness of those gentle ivory shoulders more evident in the amber gold of the firelight that lit up and warmed the entire room. She truly was beautiful. So fine, pale and elegant. _A true English rose. His English rose._

"How's that _wound? Is it deep?"_ She asks in concern. "How's the _pain?"_

Thomas shakes his head. Smiling at her. Enchanted by the copper of her hair that shine like silk in the light. "It's _fine_. My heart." He eludes.

Thomas watched her walk in, snapping into nurses mode. Unfolding her medical bag, taking out a large tin, a stethoscope, and pouring water from a pitcher into an enamel bowl. He watched her in the vanity mirror in front of her. Concentrating as she added something, something medicinal probably, from a tiny vial into the steaming water.

She crossed back over with a cloth in her hands. and sat down on the edge of the bed near him. Folding her skirts out of the way, she leaned over and before her hands touched his wound, her eyes flicker up to his own, silently asking him permission. Which he granted. He nods.

"This may _sting_ a little. Dakin's Solution. We don't know _where_ that knife has been. So I want to _cleanse_ the wound. To be safe." She explains.

He's watching her. Lovingly. She realises. "Carry on the _good work._ Nurse James." He smiles.

"It's technically, _Probationer James._ I haven't qualified for my residency _yet_..." She tells.

"Whatever _not?_ You are a _more than competent_ nursemaid." He tells her, almost chiding, reaching one hand over to sweep away a soft coil of red hair from her shoulder.

She gently stemmed the excess blood. Smiling at his passion for her before she answered. His chest rising and falling as he breathed through the stinging sterility of the medicine on the cloth.

" _Well_.... I help Dr. Harriden with his papers. I take notes. Keep medical journals. Plus I don't think the Matron, Miss Davis, at the Royal cares for me _very much_. I have as much experience in medicine as she does. Word on the ward, is that she doesn't favour me, because she fears that one day, I could _boot her out_  of a job. Not that I'd _want too.._.. The way she sweeps around the halls like a strict, black ghoul... _Barking her orders.."_ Vianne smiles. Focused unwaveringly on cleaning his cut. She didn't want him to get an infection from a foreign blade.

"You'd make a proficient _Matron_. My darling..." He told her. One free hand stroking along her jaw. Feeling the delicate suppleness of her skin. Watching her do her well-learned work. His hands were warm. And slightly callused. 

His eyes crinkled at the sides when he smiled, and the vermillion scar, in this light, made him look _rugged. And dangerous._ And only she knew he was a rogue who could be _tamed_. A gentleman who'd fought, this evening, and suffered pain tonight, to try and _protect_ her.

Her hand paused in mid-air over the wound. Her eyes met his. And there was back the _lust_ that had consumed them both earlier. It was glinting now in his eyes, and heat had started to pool low in her body. At the base of her spine. She pants.

"I can't _concentrate_ when you do _that_..." She whispers.

"That's rather my _aim_..." He whispers, smirking, leaning closer moving in to kiss her.

She stops him. Looking playful. Pressing two fingers to his soft lips. His eyes scorned her from stopping him being able to kiss her. And she smiles too. He had a large cut intersecting his bottom lip. And _that_ needed tending...

"I think I'd better _see to those lips_ of yours before you attempt any _kissing_ now, _Mr Sharpe._ " She teases. Looking up at him through her eyelashes in the most flirtatious way she could muster. This seemed to please him, _greatly,_ because he smiled. _Widely_.

"I'd forgotten what a _vixen_ you could be..."

He smiles, _purring_ , at her. She smiles, leaning back over to swab and cleanse his lip. Clean his face. Put a cold compress on his bruised, shredded knuckles. And dressed his torso. Bandaging him up.

She went back to his lip to dab at it again as it persisted in bleeding, she handed him a glass of Glenrothes. Which he took. And gladly sipped. She had a dram of he own she tipped back. Before turning back to him and dabbing once again at the scrape on his lip. She'd also taken the time to go and wash herself. Leaving him resting on the bed. Washing the dirt and blood off her cheek and chest. She undressed. And swathed her body in her nightgown and dressing gown. Letting down her hair, taking off her jewellery. She'd slid slippers on her feet, and rejoined him in her comfortable, relaxed, dress.

Though he did adore seeing her in all her corseted, elegant finery. He could not deny, seeing her with her hair loose, in her nightwear was almost _twice_ as erotic as the usual sirens call of her beauty. He'd moved across the bed whilst she was changing. She came back into the room, and sat near him. And then she was close to him again. Drawn to him like a magnet. Dressing his wounds. Caring for him. Caring after him in a way that felt natural to her.

"You always did _look after me_. And I repaid you in the most... _Foul. Way. Imaginable."_ He spoke up sincerely. This caused her to lower his hand from his mouth.

She met his eyes. Just looking across at him.

"We were... _Never_ on the same page. Thomas. There was _attraction_. And lust. _Certainly_. But I think we were two very _different_ people, to whom both our respective attractions held together. _We. Never really had a, fulfilling. marriage._ And I could never _admit to it then_. But I _can_ now. I _can_ see that now." She confessed.

He let a pause linger in the air before he spoke up.

"We're both _different_ now..." He told her. " _So different._ If we were to, _ever, maybe_ , be together again. You would be my _one_ and my _only_ priority, and my _privilege_ , Vianne. I learnt the hard way that loosing you was an _unbeatable, unbearable thing._ So. For tonight, will you let me, _show you,_ how, _very, truly sorry,_ I am?" He asks her gently.

Her heart was fuzzy. And she was warm through from both the whiskey, the fire, and his words as he sat with his hand touching the back or her waist. Cupping her close.

"How will you be intending to do _that?"_ She asks breathily. Though she felt she _already knew_. Her voice a mere gasp. A gasp that set his blood alight. And made his arousal stir to life.

He kisses her. And alike the kiss at the opera earlier, it was full of lust, passion and the gentle promise that there was much, much, more to come. More touches, more heady pleasure. Lust and breathless exhilaration. Naked intimacy. And familiarising herself once more with the embraces of her ex-husband.

When he pulled his lips from her own. Her cheeks were hot. And his eyes were black with lust. She adored that wild, carnal look on him.

"You have a Ladies Maid? Correct?" He asks her wrapping his arms about her. Kissing her neck again. Pulling her closer to him. Nudging her gown down off her shoulders, looping at her elbows. His hand spreading wide to cup her supple rear end, the other slipping up her partially bare back.

"Yes. But I'm struggling to comprehend the relevance of such a question like _that_ , at a time...like... _this_..." She whispers. Her voice a whimper as he stroked her hair out of his lips path. Her head fell back on her shoulders in bliss.

He smirked his answer into her neck, as he pressed her back to the bedcovers below, folding her legs up over his hips. Rutting his aroused body into her soft, wonderful curves. Hearing her moan before he cut her off with a kiss, but not before he purred at her:

"How would she feel about finding a man in your bed, when comes the morning?" He asks. Arching his hard, aroused, frame into her delectable body.

"It's _never_ been an occurrence before..." She gasps. Feeling his teeth rake over her throat.

 _Oh_ , her answer thrilled him so very greatly he wanted to claim her right there and then... Slide that silk gown off and reunite himself with her glorious body.

"You've _no idea_ how much it's pleased me to hear you confess to that..." He tells her. Hotly. Kissing the skin under her ear after he speaks. She gasps. Loudly. Very loudly. As she feels his hand travel up the hot silk of her thigh. Stroking through her now thoroughly aroused sex.

"Let's see if I can't make up for two years worth of lust then, shall we _my darling?"_ He purrs.

_She succumbed._

 

  
~

 

 


	9. Intimacies of Exes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Weeknd - Call Out My Name  
>  

 

 

~

  
How it felt to be led, bare, naked and perfectly contented, in the arms of the person you love more than all the riches in the world.... To Vianne. It felt like many things. It felt right. Splendid. Familiar. And above all else... It was as close to bliss as any part of her life had been, within the past two years.

She lay on her side. Tucked into her Thomas. Nuzzled against his torso. Snuggling into the crook of his bare neck. Closing her eyes as she inhaled the musk on his skin. Peppermint oil. The salt of sweat, and the tell-tale scent of male skin under her nose. Her long, soft, copper hair was thrown over his arm and shoulder. Matted and mussed from the more intimate of their activities that had gotten them both there. Stark naked under her bedclothes. Unkempt. Red cheeked and breathless from exertion, and their lusting desires, finally, having been sated.

His strong arm that she was leant against, was busy, his fingers trailing little circles over the silk of her bare hip. One shapely, pale leg thrown atop the covers, which were pulled up to her chest to conserve her modesty. Criminally hiding her beautiful, lily white bosoms from his line of sight. But as he could feel them, and her rounded hips, pressing into the side of his ribs, that somewhat eases his ardent desires.

His other hand was folded across his dewy chest. His fingers spread wide. His fingertips touching with hers. Stroking the tips of each one of her appendages. Following the curve of each one of her fingernails with his fingertip. As he looked lovingly down the the size differences between their hands. Where his were callused, tough and hardened from the labour of inventing, and his eagerness for tinkering with machinery and the like... Hers were the opposite. Softer than a dream, clean, neat and pale. She had small, dainty, nurses hands. Caring hands. Lovers hands. He adored how small they were. In comparison to his. And though her hands were small in impact, he could still feel their stinging clutch _burning_ into his shoulders from their ardour.

He folded her palm up, pressing it flat to his looking at the entwined image of their fingers slowly knotting together. Curling closed into a joined fist. That warming sight of which, makes him smile.

She shuffles below him, leaning up and kissing the side of his pale jaw. And so he joins her, he slides himself down the bed, going onto his side, lying down right next to her, adjacent, facing her. He lay on his left side, his right arm skimming erotic patterns down her bare back. Over her shoulders, across the fleshly, ample skin, covering her ribs. Soothing the sore red welts that wearing her tight corset had caused deep in her skin. He did, and would always, adore feeling her full figured curves under his hands.

"I can't believe I was so blessed with luck as to find you again.." He whispers lovingly to her. His hand coming up to stroke her forehead gently. Looking deep into her fine, pale blue eyes.

"I was terrified to think you may have gone abroad. Travelled far across the world to begin your life over. Start afresh. Get away from the terrible man you married..." He confessed earnestly. Still stroking through her hair. It was a hypnotic gesture. Full of love. Tenderness. It was making her smile, and her eyes wishing to slide gently shut in rest. Her left arm sleepily lifted up to lazily reach over and stroke his sharp, defined cheekbone.

She swallowed. Was now the right time to tell him? The secret that made her leave him was so great, and terrible. Could she really shatter this beautiful, intimate, moment by telling him the depth of her betrayal to their marriage? She decides that she didn't want to risk it. Not yet. But she knew before long, she would have to sit him down, and let that terrible confession finally bubble up out of her lips. But. For now. She crushes it deep down. Once again.

"I saw no reason, to go abroad. I never really yearned to be anywhere other than London. It made sense to come back. Hector insisted I reintroduce myself to society to have my start afresh. He wanted me to treat our marriage as a blip. But... He is, too pragmatic for his own good at times I feel. I never could treat it that way. I let it.. Be. Simply because, I thought it was what was best. For both of us. Trying to forget you, though..." She explained, one fingertip stroking down the scar under his eye. Tracing the jagged bump of it with her soft hand. Her eyes were brimming with love.

"....Was a heartache I could never bare again." She tells him. Capturing his hand in her own. And pressing a kiss to his bruised knuckle. Gently. So as not to hurt him. He leaned over to nuzzle his nose and press his lips into her hand that cupped his.

"You'll never have to suffer that loss. Should you not want too. Not ever again. Vianne." He pledges. And from the sheer look of urgency and love in his eyes, that alone forces her to believe it. She smiles widely. Looking heartened by his response.

"Let us agree, now, that we'll never put one another through such strain again." She told him. To which he smiles. And he accepts that as her answer.

"I agree to that with my entire body and soul, my love." He feels inclined to add. "You know, I couldn't stand seeing you with that arrogant, over-pompous, god given Doctor. I hated the way he treated you like a piece of meat. Like you were no more to him than a bauble he dangled off his arm. I couldn't stand it...he didn't deserve you...." He paused. Looking angry at himself as he stared down at her upturned palm.

"... And, in truth, nor did I. We were cut from the cloth. We both betrayed you. But my small saving grace was atleast having the heart and brains to know and see what beautiful, loving, and glorious woman, I had neglected." He growled. Tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear. "And to whom I will spend the entirety of my long, happy, life reminding her of such, as my penance."

She nodded in agreement.

"At first. Henry really wasn't all bad. You know...He was... So Charming. All smiles and he wooed me so easily. Brought me flowers. Took me to shows..." She explains.

"Like I did to you, when we courted..." He sighs. In the tone of a man who knew the full, shameful, guilt-filled extent of his remorse. He spoke about his former behavior with such bitterness.

"I hated him, loathed him, So much, because he was a hairs breadth away from being me. And what's more is he was worse. Lord. If that's even possible. Benton told me how he handled you after tea that afternoon. Tearing my ring off you. Treating you like a trophy to be won, and not the...wondrous being you are..." He explains softly. Cupping the side of her face in one hand. His voice got hot and angry when he thought about how the once mighty, Dr. St. Clair, had treated his ex-wife, his Vianne, in such a foul, unfeeling manner. Using her for money. Cheating her with a foul, spoilt, London heiress.

"I wanted to threaten him. Hit him. Make him suffer for all the ways he made you suffer..." He told her seriously.

"You can't right all the world my dear.." She smiles. Lovingly holding his hand. "Henry. Yes. Treated me poorly. But, already this eve, You've protected me from harm and violent thugs just a matter of hours ago. You don't need to shield me from the harm of all the world. It is life, Thomas. It's entitled to be... Turbulent." She explains.

He shuffles closer. Bringing his arms around her. Tucking her tight into his taut, lean body.

"You are _mine_. Vianne James. So help me. You were always mine, and you always will be. And if I can protect you. Care for you. And cherish, love and devote myself to you in any way. Then you can be damn certain that with my every waking minute. I will be doing _exactly that_." He promises. Kissing her hands.

"How come you always leave me so speechless?" She asks ardently.

She watches him grin like a sly fox. As he pressed himself further into her. Wrapping them up in bed sheets, and one another's hold as he leans in to kiss her once more. Slowly torturing her lips, gently easing her mouth to his. Passionately kissing her, teasing. Smiling like a madman at having her in his arms. She gasped when the absence of one hand became clear as to his intentions, when she feels his fingers slide down her naked thigh. And stroke down to her sensitive sex. Sending a jolt of passion to flare through her. He adored hearing her whimper, gasping, in delight.

"Trust me darling. I have a repertoire of ways to make you speechless." He assures her with a sinful kiss. Dipping deep into her.

"That much, I'm blissfully aware of. Mr Sharpe...You mention it as if we haven't spent the entirety of the night making love..." She coos, smiling wider as his fingers followed a well learned pattern, swirling and pressing, that was proven to make her shiver in ecstasy. The pleasure reached slowly, crawling up each vertebrae of her spine. He watched a small, pale hand clutch the bed sheets below, hard. Her knuckles whitening as she did. His lips dove for her neck. Sucking, and slowing using his mouth on the skin there to tantalise her further. Feeling her body arch up. Pressing her glorious curves into him.

He took his time tonight. Here, in bed with her. He mapped out her body again. Studying her pleasure to get back on familiar terms. He took time, researching every angle of her, how best to apply the right amount of pressure. Her gorgeous sex wasn't a nerveless chasm from which he could blindly use for his own satisfaction, and expect her to gain pleasure from such blind, fumbling, attentions. She was warm, supple, and wet. And she responded to varying angles, certain patterns of touch that left her gasping his name. Grasping for the head board in her sheer bliss.

And when he took her thighs in his hands, and guided his mouth to those soft, velvet lips. The mere, womanly scent of her made him close his eyes as he himself shuddered in ecstasy and longing. Longing for that unique scent of her. When his tongue arcs over those tender, dripping folds, he doesn't rush himself. He sets a pace. A pace that would benefit them both.

He could feel her lovely, rounded white thighs shiver either side of his cheeks, and he holds them tighter. Warmed hands stroking and rooting her where she was as she squirmed in the agonising inferno of the slow, steady build toward completion. He opened his eyes to drink in the sight of her from his particular angle - as he continued to drink from the very heart of her womanhood - he watched her arch her back, chest dewy with perspiration. Eyes screwed tight, those sweet lips parted, sighing her delight and his name mingled into one. Her hands gripping the sheets so tight, it was a miracle she hadn't ripped right through.

Vianne believes what he had told her, of him being a different man. She could feel it in the very way he pleasured her now. It had been different, when they were married, he seemed to both arouse her. And sate her needs very quickly. And be fine and done with it. Whereas now, she was continuously expecting him to move faster, to urge her quicker toward her climax. And she waits for that. For the hurried frenzy of his carnality to take over. For his hands to dig into her. His touch to brand her. To grab and take charge of her. But it doesn't happen...

He was right. He was a changed man. Certainly in respect to his bedroom and lovemaking mannerisms.

He took his time with her body now. He studied every curve, every bump, counted every new mark, and freckle. Made note of every new scar he could see. He worshipped her breasts. Those delectable rosy peaks he took into his mouth and didn't relent until she begged him to stop. He then moved further south. There was no part of her, this night, that he hadn't kissed. Or loved. Or laid devotion too. He cradled her like she was a gentle, frail, china doll he was scared to break. And he granted onto her so much release - in various ways - and ecstasy, she almost couldn't bear it. And then when he finally slid inside her once more, the stretch and tug of him so intimately joining their bodies as one, was the most sensational thing she'd ever felt.

They had nowhere to be but in each other's arms. And the way they made love reflected this fact. He gently rocks his hips, sinking and tugging in and out of her, his hand wandering to various, erotic zones of pleasure across her body. Cupping her breast, or kissing her neck. Tantalising her sweet, velvet sex with a soft, pressing, swirl of his fingers. Watching her face as he did all that, and still pecked kisses onto her cheeks. Passionately plucking embraces at her mouth and neck too.

As the need grows greater, still his roughness doesn't come, she arches and groans, feeling her bliss heighten, but he merely wraps a strong arm under and around the back of her waist. Pulling her ravishing, dewy curves to press against his chest. Skin to skin. Creating such delicious friction as he continued to thrust, love and grant her pleasure. More than he'd ever given before.

For hours it seemed to last, their heady relief so sweet, so great, that when it does come, it is so powerful, and all consuming, that Vianne clutched him so tight, and him her, that she's sure she left bruises on his fair skin when she finally cried his name to the heavens, shuddering, groaning, gasping his name, and feeling his spare hand cup the back of her hair, kissing her solidly on the mouth as he moaned his exquisite relief onto her lips. Riding out the last few, exhilarating and incredible pulses of utter pleasure. It courses through his every vein. Every cell in his body, alive and alight with lust and sweet ecstasy. And they slump onto each other, granting idle kisses. And hushed, whispered endearments as they regain their breath, and notice how flushed, sated and sodden they were. Thomas groans, laughing smugly as he tells her that the dawn was soon to rise, as they had spent so long abed with each other.

Then, once they've slumbered more, to better gather their wits and sensibilities. They talk. About anything and everything. Lolling around in each other's arms. Pouring out their hearts to the other. Vianne believes that she does, at some point or another, fall asleep, merrily tucked into his chest. His chin nesting on her hair. But the soothing timbre of his rich voice, shatters the silence. And she mumbles sleepily. Nuzzling into him. Letting the minty, musky scent of her Thomas permeate her senses, and sink into her dreams. His arms squeeze her closer. Kissing her temple. Watching her sleep. Her face peaceful, and contented, her cheeks still rosy from their shared, pleasurable exertions.

He reaches up to stroke her forehead, gently, so as not to wake her. But rather to just admire her. Touch her innocently in this moment of peace.

The peachy suppleness of her skin under his hand makes him oddly loving, and proud, smug with the satisfaction he had won her back. That this dazzling creature was his once more, and for good. There were times in the past couple of years, when he feared he'd never lay eyes on her again. And the agony of such a thought almost killed him when he reflected on it. But now. He'd got her. And he had utterly meant what he said. He adored her. And he always would. It had taken a lot for him to see that she was one of the best, brightest things to happen to him. And he would live under a cloud of eternal shame to have been the man who ignored her, and to let her go.

He realises, right then, that he wants her. And not just in his bed. But in what remained of his life. He wanted to watch that beautiful red hair turn silver, and watch crows feet grow beside her gorgeous eyes, and see her beautiful face marked with the lines of old age. He wanted to see her ripe with his child. Time and time again. He wanted a family with her. And when he got into bed at night, she was the one he wanted to pull close, and kiss goodnight. When he looked at Vianne, he felt her goodness. Because he could envisage all the usual things he thought he'd never have a chance to get. A family. A normal, life. One away from darkness and ruin. She beheld the sheer ability to calm him. To make him believe he wasn't such a monster after all. That he deserved goodness. Both the kind she instilled in his heart, and the type that radiated from her persons.

He took the moment, to savour her as she deserved to be savoured and appreciated. Had Henry done this? He thinks. Twirling a lock of fiery hair round his finger. Just sat with her, and admired her beauty. The upturn of her nose. The smattering of freckles across the pale bridge of her nose. That small, supple pair of lips. Resting eyelids, which were bordered by a long fan of obsidian lashes. She shifted in her sleep, and those twinkling cobalt eyes peek open, hooded and dark, as she peers across up at him.

"I'm so thankful that you found me again too. Thomas." She whispers. His hand rests the cup the back of her neck.

When she was in his arms, she felt... more like her true self. Whenever she had been with Henry, she felt like she was contorting herself to be a person he found pleasing. When all he had needed was someone rich and plain, to sit about and listen to him arrogantly spew out how fantastic he found himself to be. At times, he had a spiky temper, and had left her ego stinging - aswell as her skin - more than once. If at a ball, or a musicale he caught a man staring at her longer than he felt was proper. He'd grip her wrist so tight, he'd leave a bruising reminder that she was his fiancée. And no one else's. His bouts of kindness came and went. After the bruises came the bouquets of roses, and sweet words of apology, and embraces to try and make it up. But beside all the apologies, Vianne knew his affability was weak, his foul temper remained a strong constant.

But when Thomas had spoken such heated, forceful words to her at the ball that night. She found the same flaring temper in him that she recognised in Henry. And the thought of spending her life with any vicious man made her dread the day she'd walk up the aisle. In some way, the confession of Henry and Roses affair came as a sweet relief. Because she had sworn to marry him, but she cannot pretend that the idea of being his wife in the future was not a welcome one. He often spoke of how the house would be run under his instruction after they wed. How he would want sons and not daughters. Because daughters were a waste of a man's time. How he would divide her money to be settled. All this, and she had smiled and nodded through his explanation. Wondering whether or not he would be more pleased to see her money, or her, as his spouse.

"He didn't treat you the way he should have." He explains. Leaning in to kiss her. In undressing her, he had seen her scars. A jagged reminder down her shoulder of one encounter with her ex-fiancé. Henry had stumbled in one night, drunk out of his silly skull, and she, not abed yet, had answered the door to him. He demanded, shouted, telling her most furiously that his lecherous Doctor friend had declared he found her beautiful in their inebriated haze. And he was there to demand to know when the affair between them had begun. She walked upstairs. Ignoring him. Wishing him away. Not expecting him to storm after her. Further compelling her to tell him. When she dismissed him again. The end result was her being thrown down her staircase. In her fall, she fractured her arm, dislocated her shoulder, and where she landed against the hall table, the shattered remains of a vase cut deeply into her back. Leaving wounds that required stitches.

Thomas had seen them on her pale back when he helped her undress. And had looked at her, long and seriously, for a few moments. Those were obviously fresh wounds that had not littered her skin the last time he had made love to her. He kissed them. And stroked them with his hands. Hating that in their separation. She'd been thrown to the wolves. He couldn't let her marry a man like that. He wouldn't.

They found bliss together three more times before the sun rose. Listening to the sounds of London waking up, outside her window. Vianne leaves Her bedfellow to slumber. And wraps herself in her modest silk gown to slip away downstairs and fetch tea. Receiving a wry look of amusement from all three of her staff when she politely requests tea for two. She felt ashamed to admit to having a gentleman in her boudoir for the night. But she justified it well, by stating to herself that her situation was indeed an odd one. Her maid, Jeanie, smiles as she hands her the mornings post. A neat little stack of handwritten letters. One from Hector, a couple from the hospital, one from a patient. And one she had not seen before. Her face dropped when she saw it was addressed to 'Thomas Sharpes Slut.'

Her chest grew tight.

She fled from the kitchen. Not knowing who would write her such a nasty correspondence. She retreated to the hall, and stood, suddenly cold and panicked, in the foyer on the freezing tiled floor. Feeling the morning sun reach to stretch it's golden fingers through the windows, nipping at her feet as she pulled open the missive. With a shaking hand, she read the single sentence that was scrawled on the paper in an in familiar, crazed, unpracticed hand. Making her all the more terrified. Her breath left her in a terrified rattling rasp. For It read:

_"He can't protect you from everything..."_

 

~

 

 

 


	10. The Morning After, Two Years Ago.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; He Won't Go - Adele
> 
> (Follows on from the events in Chapter Seven)

 

 

 ~

 

Thomas woke alone. The gentle pelting of snow battering the window was the sound that roused him. He shifted his legs under the thick, starched, bed sheets. Wiggling his toes. Stretching his shoulder blades back into the mattress. But when he went to move his arm, that's when it became peculiar.

Because _he couldn't._

That fully woke him up. He frowns, in his haze of grogginess. He opens his eyes and starts, for it was then too that he noticed that one arm was pinned high above his head. In truth, clapped in a set of iron cuffs, shackling him to the headboard. He jerks wide awake in fear. Blinking his eyes to see the little room before him. The desk was empty. As was the chair. The fire that had roared last night, was now dead and grey. The light of the room was grey and sparse. Making the place that had looked so cosy and romantic, the eve last, now made it look lifeless and miserable.

His heart thudded harder in panic. Here he was, tangled naked in the bed sheets, and his wife was nowhere to he seen. His chest went tight and he rattled, straining against his bonds. Almost scared by the absurdity of it.

"Vianne?" He rasps. His voice croaky from sleep. He contorts his body, twisting round in bed to claw at the lock with bare fingers. The flare of panic and confusion hotting up his blood.

His head snaps to the side as the door reopened. And his wife, looking pale and small. Slunk through the frame. Shutting it with the press of her back. In this light, Thomas realised how gaunt she looked. Her eyes were puffy, and lined with dark bags. And her cheekbones made her pale face look hollow and sickly. Her hair was messily swept back off her face. And she wore a heavy grey overcoat. Not clad in her usual fine colours that complimented her hair. Today, she looked plain. And this worried.

"You have some _serious_ explaining to do Vianne Sharpe. What _the hell_ is the _meaning of this?"_ He asks. A touch angrily. The loud clanking of the chain as he jerked it, _slamming_ against the iron bed stead, made her _flinch_.

She swallowed. Looking at him with dread. She crossed to the desk, and took a stack of official papers from her carpet bag that sat atop it. She put her back to him as she did. Before she turned around. Walked to the bed. And placed the documents before him. So he could read the title. Which read;

" _Proceedings for filing a divorce..."_

His mouth gaped, and he frowned up at her as she stood above him. Looking sad, pale and conflicted.

"You _cannot_ be serious?" He asks her harshly.

"On the contrary. Thomas. I've never been so _heedless_ about a situation in my entire life..." She promises him shakily. She comes forward and flips to the last page.

"Please. Sign this... " She demands from him in a small voice. Putting a solid Inkpen on top of the bundle of papers. He looked down at the pen, studying the blank spot where she wished him to scribble his name. Hers were already filled in. She had been thinking of this, entirely in secret. He was not privy to how she'd come to manage securing such foul papers.

It was a damned good thing he couldn't move. For her sake. Because now he was livid. His eyes pierced her own. And she felt the full weight of his bewildered rage hit her squarely in the chest.

He shook his head. Tears spearing his eyes as he looked across at his wife. Unable to believe that in her silence, and solitude, that she had been planning such a dastardly, cowardly scheme. Whilst he was busy working, and collecting parts from the foundry as if nothing was wrong. Going about his usual life. And she had been plotting how she could leave their marriage... It was unbelievable. He couldn't wrap his head around it.

"Why didn't you talk to me? Vianne? Why didn't you-" He asked. Trailing off. An odd mixture of bewilderment, sadness and rage churning around inside him.

She sighs. Shaking her head. And tears, she couldn't stop, sprang from her eyes. Sliding down her bony cheeks. In this light she looked sick. Green skinned and deathly pale. Not healthy in the slightest. Usually her skin held a radiant, dainty glow. But now. She looked ashen. And he could see her tremble.

"So many times I tried Thomas. So don't you _dare_ accuse me of being the reticent one. Do you know how many nights I waited up for you? Whilst you sat up in the attics, devoting all if your time and attention to your work. How many homemade, romantic dinners I watched grow cold, whilst waiting for you?" She asks. Before she then scoffs in wryness. "How many nights I spent alone in our bed. Waiting. Always waiting for you. I'm fed up of being the only person who is invested in this marriage. Thomas. So sign those papers, and you'll never have to see me again. You and Lucille can..." She swallows. Unable to finish her words. Spinning around so he couldn't see her tears if shame.

"You think I'm _so_ ignorant. Not to know what _happens_ between the two of you. You really credit me with so little intelligence?" She asks. She summons the courage to turn and meet his eyes again.

"Thomas. You found your escape from the horrors of your childhood in your work. I see that. Through your work, everything you find broken, you rebuild it. To make it function. Make it beautiful. Make it have a use and to serve a purpose again. Lucille, I think, found her escape in you. You both kept the world which had brutalised and tortured you as children at bay, through a love so strong, warped as it is, you both created a new world. And it was entirely your own." She explains.

"...and no one could ever encroach on that. Not me. Not anyone. Lucille's bitterness and rage towards me at the start was not just because she was lonely or didn't want me in her home. It was because I was a threat to her for taking you away from the panacea of your love. So it begs me to ask why you are even _bothering_ to fight me on this..." She tells him. Pointing to the divorce papers.

"I've settled you and Lucille a substantially large sum of money in the alimony. I don't want anything from you. Apart from your signature. Let me go. Thomas. You don't need me. You've never needed me. Only for the money. I realise that now..." She finalises.

He shook his head stubbornly. Refusing her wishes.

"I never..." He began. Croaking. He had wanted to say he couldn't live without her, that she made him smile, and laugh, and that she was wrong.... He did need her. He needed her madly. But what else for him to say? She was right about him. About Lucille. Everything. It slowly dawned on him that she was already lost to him... He could scream and claw... And kick and scream blue murder. He could shout the rafters down. But she was making it clear she wished to exit that door with signed papers. And never see him again. Her mind was set. This was already happening and what’s worse, was that he was helpless to stop it.

"How long have you been planning this?" He asks with quiet contempt. Looking ahead. Not meeting her eyes now. He stared at the grey, dead ash in the fireplace. Unable to take in this treachery to their vows.

"For almost two months now..." She tells him. Watching the handsome profile of his face.

"Where will you go?" He asks tersely.

"Why do you care?" She bites back softly.

He turns his head to glare at her. She stood, safely out of reach. Still looking fatigued and troubled.

"In the eyes of England and The Lord almighty, Vianne. You are. My. Wife." He tells her. "I may not have been the most attentive or caring of spouses. But I do not deserve your trickery and deceit."

She tilts her head at him. Poignantly.

"And I say to you. Sir. Pots. Kettles." Comes the poisonous words, daggering out from between her small lips.

" I can't stay at Allerdale any longer. Thomas. I tried. For a year, my best to fit in. But it cannot, and can never be. And now I see it is folly of me to think I could.... ever... have you love me in return for the way I so dearly love you." She cries.

"So do me a favour. Sign those papers. You shall have your money. I will vanish. And You will _never_ have to lay eyes on me again." She finishes.

When he doesn't move. Just stares at her. She is forced, in her desperation, to stalk back to her open carpet bag, and pull out the small, misshapen, clunky and hand held object. Heading back to the bed, she cocks it and points it. With shaking fingers, directly at him. A browning handgun. More tears drop as she shakily pants and holds it aloft.

He looks at her then, with a face of _pure_ betrayal. Showing her the depth of his disapproval. His eyes were cold, and now she can see how terrifying he could look. How livid.

"I don't want to have to use this. But I have no choice. I have to leave this godforsaken place. _Today_. Sign the papers. Thomas." She informs him strictly. More tears were falling now. But she knows she cannot, and will not, let herself down. She had to be strong.

Her heart sighs with relief when he picked up the Inkpen. And scratched his signature across the line that would end their marriage in black and white.

She swallows. Lowering the gun. She procured it a while ago. She slept within arms reach of it. It helped her feel a little safer, knowing she could get at it easily. Should Lucille come to pay her a nightly visit with a carving knife again.

"You've got what you wanted." Thomas growls at her. Throwing the pen to clatter down on the bed with his free right hand. The left still incapacitated.

Vianne snatched them away. Nodding. She stuffed them into an envelope in her carpet bag that she had the post office clerk hide away for her. So as not to garner Lucille's quick suspicion. She then reaches and grabs something else now. And heads back across to the bed.

"Let me loose this instant." He ordered lethally, jangling the infernal cuff. His voice low and dangerous. He couldn't look at her. Which. Would turn out to benefit in her favour.

She blinks. Sending up a silent prayer. Asking god, if there was one, to help present her courage through what she was about to do next...

Before her hand darted to his neck, and sunk the needle deep into the column of his throat. Before he could scramble to push her away, he feels the cold rush of something foreign bursting through his blood. Shooting like ice through his veins. And then the sharp scratch of the hypodermic is gone. The room starts to drag, and blur, and he can hear his heartbeat deafening his eardrums.

Sobbing still. She places the handcuff key in his lap. Secures on her hat. Wipes away her tears, and gathers her paltry few belongings. When she looks back to the bed his hand flails for her. Searching, gasping at the fact she'd resorted to drugging him too. All to be assured he wouldn't follow her. Allowing her much needed time to slip away. 

But she couldn’t go just like that. 

Her bag clatters to the floor where she drops it. Crying inconsolable tears, she heads back to him, weeping still, through tears she commits her last look of him, to memory. This lying man who was in sole possession of her heart.

He stares up at her. Seeing multiple visions of her, hazy and distorted in his vision, as she holds his hands to her lips and kisses it fondly. He feels a hot tear splash down onto his skin.

"I'm sorry. Forgive me. My love. It was the only way. I had too. I'm so sorry. " She whispers.

"Wha-what. D-dd..." He tries to ask. Wanting to know if she'd poisoned him.

She pauses for a moment before she speaks. Holding him close as he was relaxing under the paralysis of the drug she flushed into his veins.

"Barbiturate." She explains. "You'll be sedated for a few hours, and woozy when you wake." She tells him. He merely gasps again. Struggling to make his eyes take in the sight of her.

Her fingers stroking his wild hair for one last time as he began to drift away. The blackness rolling in. Taking over his mind, numbing his body. Depriving him of every decent sense. A mushy darkness quickly consumes him whole. Like he was sinking into a bath of Allerdale's red clay. It sucked him in, and devoured him.

"I'm sorry I can't tell you the real reason why..." She speaks as she weeps. Kissing his untamed, raven black, hair. "Hate me if you must.... But I have to do this..." She explains.

He was gone. Lost to the swirling pit of drugged oblivion.

Looking at his resting, ivory, face. Tilted back on the pillows. She steals her last glance at him. Before she turns and heads for the door. To go and catch her train. The ticket nesting in her pocket a snug reminder that she was really doing this. Putting Thomas Sharpe, and the horrors of Allerdale Hall, the love of her life, far, far behind her.

 

~

 

Hector Wakeman had promised to meet his crestfallen niece off the train from up North. He checked his pocket watch. She told him she had planned to be on the four o'clock. Which was just chugging to rest at the platform as he looked up from his newspaper. Thinking idly about how long this would take, he had to be back in the office by six for a nasty deposition from a Lord to his soon to be Ex-Lady on the matter of witnesses as to a violent quarrel over the matter of the Lords gaming and whoring.

He scanned about the bustle and fuss if the train station. Alarmed at the dirt of soot cakes to every surface, and the multitude of assaulting sights and scents on the senses. The roar and pitch of train whistles. The bellowing shouts from conductors, and the clatter of crowds of feet and people dragging heavy luggage storming about, to get to where they needed to be. Frankly, if he didn't have to leave the office, that would suit him just fine. He detested the dirt and squalor of this modern, overcrowded London. He had his eye on a large country estate that would soon be his. After he settled the sombre matters here...

He watched the metal train come to a chugging, hissing and lolloping stop. Like a heavy metal slug, shuddering it's weighty self along the train tracks. Coming to it's resting place. Bellowing out steam in a gushing hiss as it stopped. Hector raises his head, examining the rows of unrefined carriages. Leading back as far as the eye could see. He placed his pocket watch back on his rotundas belly, slipping it into his waistcoat.

He cleared his throat. Folded his newspaper under one arm, and picked up his briefcase. He wore his usual look. Striped tie. Red waistcoat. Black work tails and white spats. He had his golden, eagle headed, walking cane under his other arm. And his bowler hat sat on his balding head. Capping his ruddy red face, flabby neck, fat cheeks and bulbous nose. He still wore his golden spectacles, and he was the nearest, dearest and only relation that Vianne Earnest-James had in the entire world. He wasn't really over affectionate, he didn't mollycoddle her. But he gave her an odd sense of comfort whenever and wherever she needed it most.

He wasn't a cold man. He just spent far too much time not interacting with people, to be considered odd when he did socialise with them. To Vianne. He was entirely generous... He had tried to warn her that marrying a mysterious Baronet in despair was unwise, but, she didn't listen. He was not angry at her. She had insisted he heart was in it. And he believed her. Though he kept it to himself, he didn't like what he heard of the man. But he found not be a drain on his nieces happiness. And when she had written him that letter explaining why she had to leave.... Why, It tore his very underused heart in two. There was anger too. At this faceless, unfeeling, baronet who’d gotten everything he wanted from her.

He watched many men and women embark from the carriages, flooding to the platform. Clutching cases and children and spouses as they searched around London with wide eyes. Taking it all in for the first time. Through all of them, his eyes search. Looking for the red hair. The shapely figure. The graceful fairness of his young relative.

When he finally claps eyes on her. He stills. Visibly flinching as he catches sight of her. He swallows. Watching her lug her meagre belongings under the crook of one arm. Swathed in a big grey coat that was shabby, frayed at the hem and too big for her. Her hair was messily confined back on her head. Straggling. Drooping. Her face was gaunt, and he could see the hollowness of her cheeks where she looked slimmer than when he had seen her last. She had always been a shapely girl. But now, she looked _gaunt_. And too slight to be considered healthy. The look worsened under the swathing cover of the much too large coat.

Her eyes were puffy, red and swollen from crying. And he could see the dried trails of tears wetting her raw cheeks. She looked to her feet in misery as she trudged along. Itching nervously at the spot on her hand where a wedding ring had once sat. She had thrown that lying little gold band of wretchedness, out of the train window into a field. Somewhere south of Manchester. 

She saw him stood, awaiting her. And she managed a sad twitch of a smile. She scuttled across to him. And burst into tears when he defied all his usual stiff, unsocialised mores, and wrapped her into a solid hug. Cradling the back of her head as she muffled her cries into his shoulder.

"There, there. Vianne." He soothes. Patting her back, feeling her bones prominently poking out of her skin. "Your home now. It's alright. It'll all be alright." He assures.

She withdraws. Wiping under her stinging eyes. Before she rummages down in her pockets and withdraws the thick, padded paper envelope that contained a very important document. It was wrinkled where she had fisted it in her hands so many times.

"Here..." She sniffs. Pressing it into his hands. "Put it to good use. Would you?" She asks. He whisks it away from her grip.

"First thing on my list tomorrow morning. After my cup of tea. Toast. And my rashers of bacon." He smiles. Seeing his jape didn't lift her mood. He rubbed her arm. Trying to let her know she would be ok.

"He didn't suspect?" He asked her lowly. To which she shook her head. Sighing. She almost wished he had.

"Not a thing." She told him glumly. Looking ashamedly to her feet. Shuffling as he reached over and plucked her bag from her hands. Sweeping it onto his arm.

"You have two weeks in London. I've booked you into Harley Street to see a physician. _Lord_ only knows what you've been put through in Cumbria. They'll give you all you need. And then you'll go onto Kent to Oakhampton, the finest sanatorium in all of the British Isles for, the entirety of the summer whilst you recuperate." He informs her.

Her face falls. She was surprised by hearing him say that. She swallows....And then she nods. Doing as he bid her.

She had no grounds with which to fight him. He had stood by and let her make a big mistake in her marriage. The least she could do was accept the offered olive branch of his help. Which. As it turns out, is her lifeline. Without him. She doesn't know where she'd be.

"I think it's for the best, Vianne. I really do. You need to be somewhere where you feel safe, and comfortable in your conditions. I'm very pleased you took the initiative to leave, you know, that's very brave of you, my dear..." He flatters her.

"I don't _feel_ very brave." She tells him meagrely. As they begin towards the taxi rank.

"I know you don't...." He sighs. Clutching her hand. "But you'll see one day that it was right. And... Vianne. It was the only choice. Doing what you did, It saved your life." He tells. "And we can't put a price on preserving such a precious thing, now can we?"

She is silent again. Retracting in on herself. Trying to forget the man and the life she'd left far behind her. But no matter how she tried. She knows that she'd never be entirely _free_ of Thomas Sharpe.

  
~

 

 


	11. Nurses and Gentlemen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Premiere Gymnopedie - Erik Satie
> 
> Why this song you ask? If you do listen to it. Please imagine its how Thomas feels every time he looks at Vianne.

 

 

 

~

 

Thomas Sharpe sat alone in the Royales expensive, elegant and low lit dining room. Candlelight the colour of champagne splashed up the walls, and doused the ceiling. Silent waiters skated dextrously through the room, gliding from table to table. The rooms atmosphere is underlined by sheer elegance, and class. Baroque, golden mirrors, that seemed to ooze and drip gilding down the middle, lines each wall. Multiplying the room out on itself for what seemed like eternity. Gold chandeliers cast soft lighting around the antique, ornate ceiling. That too was ostentatious in it's 17th century extravagance. Everything was _flawless_. The food. The wines, the champagnes. It all promised to be luxurious and immaculately sublime.

He sat, alone, at a white, linen clothed table that was laid as flawlessly as an iced cake. Set for two, gleaming silver cutlery, the finest china, adorned with sparkling wine glasses, crystal, glinting in the light. Like amber sherry in the firelight. It was a dinner service so fine that it could be served to royals at Buckingham palace should it need be. Though he himself admitted he wasn't exactly the kind of gent to get along with all members of society. Tonight, he looked undoubtedly suited to this environment. Pressed black tails, black waistcoat, and a scarlet red ascot tie. His hair was neatly brushed back, and most of the curious men and women about the room were drawn to his mysterious aura, and the beauty of this elusive, lonely creature.

Men wondered who he was, this abstruse, dark outsider. And women wondered what on earth an eligible, stunning man like that could possibly be doing, dining _alone_.

He and Vianne had an outstanding reservation this evening, to dine. She had been volunteering all afternoon at the Hospital. He had been surveying some possibilities of striking up business with a local engineering company. So their days had been separate. But he had pledged to her that their evening, most certainly would not be. If at all possible, he wished to spend the evening as entwined as was possible. He couldn't keep his mind off what happened between them the other night.

Whenever he shut his eyes, he could smell and feel her skin under his hands. Her lips on his neck, and her small hands raking into his back. He could picture her, utterly naked, laying in bed next to him. Doused in moonlight, that red hair a copper mess and her lips all wet, red, and bruised from his kiss as she lay under him. Enchanted in his hold. Her full  breasts too, glistening in the moonlight  wet from his mouth.

He opened his eyes. Trying not to let his body grow aroused at the thought as he sat there. He blinked, jolting himself back to reality. He adjusted and refolded his legs under the table, shifting his restless body. Glancing once more at pocket watch. They'd agreed to meet at eight o'clock sharp. And now it was a quarter to nine.

He watched it go from ten past, to twenty past, and then half. His eagerness to see her not fading. He could only hope the next few minutes would bring her to him. But. To no avail it would seem...

He had his eyes glued to the doors, waiting the familiar sight of her to walk through those doors at any second. Most probably flustered, and wearing that pinched expression of empathy for being so late to their dinner. His eyes diligently watch the doors. _Waiting_. For that red hair. That shapely figure that was wholly and uniquely her. His eyes are blessed with no such luck tonight.

He tightens his jaw. Putting his watch away before he had the displeasure of watching it tick over to nine. Sighing inwardly to himself. His eyes flicking back over to the place setting opposite. He watched her champagne fizzing and spitting in it's glass. Probably warm by now. And he looked on with despair at the velvet jewellery box and red rose he'd sat to nestle on her placemat. The sapphire necklace he bought her that he wanted her to wear with nothing else on.

A wry, polite cough at his side alerted him to the dark coated, light of foot, waiter who'd appeared at his side as if he were not human, but rather a spectre made out of thin air.

"Will your companion be joining you to dine, sir?" Comes the enquiring sneer. Hands folded nearly behind his back. Thomas gave him a pointed stare from those piercing eyes. Letting him know his snide contestation did not go unnoticed for it's poignant sarcasm.

"Evidently, I think by now, we _both_ know the answer to that question..." Thomas answered him. A slight edge to his tone. The waiter dipped his head in a formal bow. And slid away to attend another table.

He drained his own glass of lukewarm champagne. It was sweet, crisp and the tang of taking so much at a time burned acrid in his throat. He slowly stood. Scraping the chair back. And coming to a stand. He picked up the velvet box, stroked it with his thumb, sadly, and slid it back into his pocket. He tucked his chair back in under the table. And adjusted his jacket. Smoothing his lapels, and the creases near his elbows. He looked at the docked stemmed, crimson rose on the table below.

He picked it up. And twirled it round in one hand. Feeling the brush of its silky petals ghost over his knuckles. Able to sense it's sickly, rich fragrance.

When he detects the hefty burn of someone's eyes boring into him, he looks up. A few tables away, a young girl, no more than ten and six years old, was watching him. Her big, innocent eyes snapping elsewhere when he joined eyesight with her. Her cheeks reddening. He could tell her age by her waif like figure that hadn't blossomed into womanhood yet. And she still wore little blue ribbons twined in her dark hair. He felt sorry for the poor lamb. Sat in such a stuffy environment was no entertaining experience for any child. All the more potent for the unfortunate girl, as she was being ignored by both her parents. That was no way to treat a child.

He turns to leave. His pride a little sore, dejected, slightly incensed at Vianne for forgetting their engagement for dinner. He cuts through the dining room. Heading in the girls direction. A testament to how _little_ attention her parents were paying her. That they didn't even notice when Thomas stopped and handed her the red rose. She took it, reluctantly, still as shy as a baby fawn.

He smiled down at her, before nodding kindly and in a gentlemanly manner, before he moved away. Out of the expensive, elegant atmosphere. Away and off into that London night.

  
~

 

Usually the wards at night were quiet. Only the sounds of coughs and snores to be heard, and the gentle footsteps of careful nurses, gliding from bed to bed, with oil lamps, to check dutifully on their sleeping patients.

Tonight was _no such_ night...

This evening, the wards were lively. Invigorated by the catastrophe that had all medical hands on deck. Everywhere was chaos. Chaos, blood, burns and bandages. It was all a blur. Shouts and groans of agony. People crying out for their mothers, wives or doctors. The three people whom beheld the highest degrees of comfort, safety and escape from the pain. Her evening thus far was a blur of fractures, deep wounds and sutures. She felt like no matter how fast she stitched, dressed and helped reset splintered bones. She was still behind. Men and their cries, faces gnarled in agony, all were seared, raw, into her mind.

Vianne had never known a night like it. Other than the war, was her instant comparison. The receiving room was crammed. There had been a boiler explosion at the docks from a faulty compound yard. Which meant that every already full ward was twice as busy. Vianne wasn't a properly qualified nurse. She was busied by fetching and carrying clean linens, changing beds, dressing wounds and tending of those who needed help with feeding themselves.

She must have been a sight for sore eyes, in her high collared, aproned, cobalt blue dress. Streaked with blood, and muck. Her white sleeves she'd left off long ago, after she shed them helping assist in holding down a man who'd sustained severe burns from the Docks explosion. Her hair was unruly, and unkempt now. But even Matron Davis was too busy in her duties tonight, to point out that her buttons were askew and her drooping hair arrangement needed re-pinning.

Vianne liked her work. Really she did. She found pleasure in dressing wounds, helping ease pains and aches. Sorting immaculate linen cupboards and organising a spotless ward into it's functionality. She got along very nicely with patients. She was always requested after, to sit by beds. Read stories, chat idly with them. Both young and old, male and female. She was adored on the wards. Her bedside manner was remarked on as being divine. They always asked for Nurse James.

She was there. Always. For those in need. Helping young girls dress their hair prettily, or getting young boys to eat all their greens under doctors orders. She could comfort the lowliest, foulest, most vile mannered person into easiness. Five minutes talking with her and her no nonsense attitude, and they were cured of their ill temper. No one could deny it. She was a highly skilled nurse. And no exception. Though she wasn't aware if it, her looks helped her along somewhat too. That made her all the more popular - particularly with the male patients. Staff or not, both adored it when she did her rounds on Wellington, the men's ward, because that meant that everyone would be obedient if she were there to cause smiles.

She'd just delivered another round of dirty linen to the laundry, and hurried back to the ward. Where Sister Evangeline have her an entirely new set of orders. To redress bandages in beds, four, seven, and bed twelve.

She nods. Wiping a hand over her dewy brow. Dutifully obeying. There were too many things to keep track of. Her mind going at a million thoughts a minute. She grabs an oil lamp, and heads to Mr. Hewitt. She almost preferred to work at night. It was calmer. But after the catastrophe earlier, the place was still humming with life, and it was all hands on deck. Doctors still flitted about beds, nurses marched from bed to bed soothing where they could, and groans of agony could still be heard. There would be no slumbering silence for a good while yet.

She rounds bed four, and sees the old man within, brighten lightly at the sight of her. He was led back, asleep, his cheeks rosy, and he was perspiring too. She could see it plain as day in the sparse, low, lamp light. His hooded eyes found her as she came to stand by his bed. Her eyes creased as she smiled gently down at him. He groaned, adjusting himself to sit up. Made all the harder by the fact that his left arm was no more than a nub. Having been amputated a week ago for gangrene from a poorly done tattoo. He was baring the loss of it remarkably well.

"Having trouble sleeping, are we, Mr Hewitt?" She asked in a gentle whisper.

"Yeah. A bit. All that rackets keeping me 'wake. Nurse. D'you think you could tell 'em to keep in down?" He japes lightheartedly.

"... You and me would both be in for the long jump if I let out so much as a peep of that notion to Dr. Warner. He's busy trying to patch up those poor people from the docks explosion..." She explained. Straightening and retucking his covers, adjusting his pillows. It was some form of magic she had about her, he decided, because from two mere touches and suddenly he felt much more relaxed and comfortable from the simple way she'd rearranged his pillows and bedcovers.

"Sister told me you were uncomfortably hot earlier..." She adds. Placing a cool, soft hand on his forehead. She then reaches down for his pulse, finding her watch and taking his pulse. Which was a little faster than normal. She then reached for a thermometer and he dutifully allowed her to slip it under his right armpit.

"My temperature always shoots up when it's you here to take it, Miss." He flatters. Vianne smiles. Slyly. Watching him out of the corner of her eyes. Flicking over from where she was still watching her pocket watch.

"Now, now. Mr Hewitt. Do try to behave yourself. Your temperature and your heartbeat certainly aren't. And we can't have that. Now can we?" She tells him firmly. "Would you mind awfully unbuttoning your shirt please, Mr Hewitt. I need to get to your wound. Due for your hourly check I'm afraid. We need to see if there are any abnormalities happening with those dressings.." She tells, helping him slip off his striped hospital wear, nodding when she saw the state of his wound. It was seeping through the snowy dressing. And when she pressed her hand to it. She found what she thought she would. It was abnormally hot. She unwound it, and found his discomfort was due to that fact the surgical site was slightly infected.

"I'll speak to Sister Evangeline and Dr. Warner, Mr Hewitt. But it looks to me like there might be an infection. Which means you may need a drain in that wound. We'll get you comfortable as soon as is possible... I'll make sure of it. In the mean time. I'll fetch you a cool flannel and some ice-water to help cool you down. Never worry. We'll get you sorted." She assures him. Patting his shoulder. Before recollecting her oil lamp and heading for the desk.

She can barely get her words out. And she had more tasks to be getting on with. It turns out the young rascal in bed three had a friend sneak him in more booze flasks again. Trouble was, booze was not a good thing in trying to cure portal hypertension. Causing cirrhosis of the liver. All of which meant that one should usually give up the cup that inebriates and not cheers. Trouble was. Their patient was a slippery customer. An East Ender who was the very meaning of the word trouble.

"I've no idea what to do with him. Nurse James. He's a menace. As if we don't have enough to deal with on our plates tonight already... That boy has a smart mouth on him. And he's as stubborn as a mule." Sister Evangaline fretted to Vianne, in a quiet hush under her breath whilst she angrily scratched her pen onto the ward report.

Vianne smiles. They were both in the same state. Weary to the bone. Dead on their feet. Aching. Hungry and tired beyond any reasonable measure. Covered in blood and various other fluids that couldn't be named. Hair mussed. Uniform shabby. It was remarkable, what the toll of a day saving lives took on ones appearance.

"Don't worry, Sister." Vianne assures her. "In my own way. So am I." She smiles. Heading over. All she wanted to do was drop into a hot bath, with a stiff drink, and scrub her day away. But, she sighs wearily, not yet she can't.

Again. She is off. Barely having time to stand still. She crosses to bed three, where their calamitous patient lay with his bowler hat perched wonkily on his head. His arms were cockily crossed behind his head, and his legs were resting in the same crossed manner. One folded over the other. He lay atop the covers. Smirking at Vianne as she moved closer.

"Evenin' Nursey..." He drawled when she came close. She stood by the end of his bed. Her hands folded as she looked at him sternly.

"Good Evening. Mr Robins." She smiles sweetly. "How are you feeling?" She asks pointedly. Rounding the bed. Eyeing him shrewdly as he levelled his hat on his head. When she came closer, she eagerly eyed a spot of a stain on his shirt. It was the colour of toffee. But she had a sneaking suspicion that it was not a confectionary related spillage. He had that wicked gleam in his eyes. One she had seen in him before when she was admitted. And it had not appeared there under the influence of sobriety.

"Can I help you, Nurse?" He asks her cheekily. Vianne says nothing. But narrows her eyes and steps forwards to look through his bedside cabinet. He jumps a little, sitting up in the bed.

"Am I to find any contraband that you are wishing to keep hidden from us, Mr Robins?" She asks. Searching through his folded clothes.

"I'd not dare hide anything from you, Nurse." He flirts. She drops to her knees, crouching, and runs her hand along the underside of his mattress. He watched her. Those brown eyes twitching in nervousness that he masked with confidence. She could see him fidget in disquiet as she probed around.

"You don't believe me. Do ya? Oh. I am hurt Nurse. You cut me. Cut me to the quick you 'ave." He teases all the more. She stops. And raises an unimpressed brow at him, her smile wry, as her hand grasps for the object that it came into contact with. She gets her fingers around it, and tugs it out. Tilting her head in a silent query as she held a small hip flask in her hand. Still able to hear something sloshing around inside it. She watched Mr. Robins sit bolt upright. Looking severely panicked.

She opened it and swilled it's contents around. Holding it under her nose to take a sniff. Raising a brow.

"By my guess....I'd say... Scottish.... Single malt, whiskey. Judging by that stain on your lapels. And if I got any closer, Mr. Robins, would I, or would I not, be able to smell that very same spirit on your breath?" She asks him with thinning patience. Still smiling down at him. He averted his eyes. Ashamed under her scrupulous interrogation.

"Just a little tipple to take before bed, Nurse. Nothin' 'armful. I can't sleep without it." He protested grumpily.

"Mr. Robins. You came to us because though you may be in your early twenties. You have the scarred liver, and abdominal tenderness of a middle aged, forty year old. You're suffering from alcohol poisoning. Mr Robins... Because that's what drink is doing to you. Poisoning you. Killing you and if you keep it up at this rate, you'll have a lot more strife to deal with than me giving you a sharp dressing down. Do you understand?" She tells him firmly.

He looks ashamed. But seems to perk up and smile filthily at her again.

"Wouldn't mind you giving me any sort of dressing down, Nursey." He winks. Vianne sighs and employs her best, well learned, sharp, hard, nurses glare that oft had people jumping to obedience to do her bidding when she employed it. Patient or no.

"That's, Nurse James. To you. Mr. Robins. I've no doubt in the streets you think yourself in charge. But this here's my domain. And I rule in here with absolute authority... Now consider this flask confiscated. And if I pass by again and find you still awake, I will set Matron on you. And you'll be begging for a reprieve by the time she's done with you. I assure you." She promises. Tucking the flask in her pocket and walking away. Before an idle thought occurs to her. And she pauses...

She walks back to his bed. And smiles, politely.

"Do you not take your hat off, to a Lady?" She demands with a cunning smile. Knowing she had him beat. He acquiesced to her request. Plucking his hat and lifting it off his head to her. Careful to keep the inside brim concealed from her sight.

She rolled her eyes and snatched it from his hands. He let out a loud exclamation as she did. But quietened down when she looked into the some of it, and found yet another flask pinned, hidden up there.

She raises a brow. She unmatched the flask, and with a flick of the wrist, as if she was skimming a stone, she tossed the hat back to him. It landed on his chest. Emptied of it's contraband contents.

"Sweet dreams, Mr. Robins. You are a terrible liar." She smiles before she sidles away to the Nurses desk.

"My dreams aren't sweet compared to your tender care, Nursey." He calls sarcastically after her.

She rounds the counter, smiling at Sister. Placing the two flasks in a strongbox. Smiling at her conquering victory. Placing the source of Mr. Robins ill health under lock and key. And putting it out of sight. If only all illnesses were so easily cured. She thinks.

"We'd be a sorry ward without your expert touch. Nurse James. I thank you." Sister Evangaline smiles, looking up for a moment from her ward report. She had a sweet smile that was rarely seen for all the times she was so shrewish and strict. She was kind. But she took no nonsense above it. Vianne had a kinship with her. She saw less and less of her acerbity now. The very same veracity that had most probationers shivering in fear when she passed them by.

"Oh, a Gentleman just left this for you. Nurse James... he didn't leave his name. He said you'd know who he was, and what it was about." She told. Passing her a small, white envelope.

Vianne swallowed. Looking at the small, rectangular slip of paper in Sister Evangeline's hand. Her breath came short, and she felt queasy just looking at the dreaded little thing.

For if it was anything alike the note she had relieved the other day. She didn't want to go through opening another. She took it quickly. With a false smile. And a nervous, trembling hand.

It had her first name written on it. No profanity's this time. Which eases her fears, if only by a little. She smiles meekly.

"Have you any other duties for me, Sister?" She asks curtly.

Sister Evangeline met her eyes, smiled. And bid her leave to go and take a tea break for a few moments. Vianne walked briskly away, out of the wards double doors. Which squeaked loudly in her absence. And her footfalls echoed loudly in the empty, hallway. She stalks quickly to the linen cupboard, and shuts the door soundly after her.

She'd hidden the previous one from Thomas. His temper would be volcanic if he thought someone was threatening his Vianne. She'd stuffed it into her dressing gown pocket and forgotten it. But let it instead burn a gaping hole in her brain...

Then she gasps.... Thomas. Oh. God, Thomas.

She is suddenly hit with a wave of epiphany. Aswell as one of guilt and shame. It had just gone eleven o'clock. And she had dutifully promised Him she'd meet for a romantic dinner at the Royale at Eight. She put a hand to her forehead. She felt rotten. She sighs in her abhorrence at her stupidity. She'd been so caught up in her shift and orders, that she'd quite forgotten the time.

She opened the note with a heavy heart. She have to make it up to him in some way. She'd stood him up, without so much as a note. But when she tore open the letter in her hands, she didn't find anger in it's contents.

"Carry on the good work. Dearest Heart."

~

When she is released from her duties, she doesn't even bother to change from her nurses uniform. She pulls on her coat. Collects her surgical bag. And trudges wearily for a hackney cab. Her aching body bone weary, and miserable. She was tired, hungry and filthy. And to top it all off, she'd let her Thomas down. She hated letting anyone down, let alone him. Especially not him.

She chides herself all the way home. Wanting nothing more than a scorching hot bath, and to get a missive to him as quickly as was possible. Detailing all the ways in with she was sorry for missing their engagement tonight. She can only hope he'd bed forgiving. But judging by his perplexing letter, he had visited the hospital, and found she was too busy to be pried away. That's what are away at her worst of all.

The fact he now thought that she would put work ahead of him was just too unfathomable to bear.

When she gets home, she drags her aching limbs out of the cab. Cursing inwardly at the frankly foul nature of the ache in her neck, and back. Pays the driver. And coerce her ailing form up the steps, unlocking the front door, she let's herself in. And shuts it after her. The house is dark, and eerily quiet. Tonight was Jeanie's night off. She often went to see her family in Poplar.

She stood, for a second. Looking up at her dark, empty house. Never dreaming she'd be the lowly spinster. Coming home to a cold, dark, house. A silent house. To a woman of her age, was the saddest thing of all. No husband. No children. Not even an aged relative keeping her company in the next room. Just her. And her monotonous life.

She sighs. Putting her coat on the rack, chucking her back on the side table. In the foyer mirror, she looks at her dark, baggy eyes. And exhausted face. Un-pinning her nurses cap, and removing her stained, bloodied apron. She crumples it into a ball in her hands. She then detached the stiff, two buttoned collar and threw that down too. Undoing buttons down to her chest, letting some air get to her heated skin. Placing a steady hand on her sternum. She breathes deep and looks in the mirror. She saw the same flawed woman staring back.

She'd march herself upstairs. And flop onto her bed. She wasn't even sure she'd spare the energy to pull off her shoes. Of course, her corset was ruthlessly tight. And she wanted to tear it off. But with the little energy she has, she fears the climb above stairs would sap her of all the little motivation she did have left.

She turns to take her bloodied clothes upstairs, when her attention is drawn to her front parlour door. Because there was a sliver of amber light slicing under the door. Standing out like a beacon in the dark house. She frowns.

Walking quickly to the door, she twists the handle and slowly walks the door open. When she saw what was the other side, she gasped. Smiling wholeheartedly at the sight within.

A small table. Set for two. Laden with lit silver candelabras, dressed with a vase if roses, and two silver domes awaiting their attention. And one ex-husband sat smiling across at her from the settee.

"May I begin with a thousand apologies?" She asks him sincerely. Frowning with empathy at him.

Thomas comes to a stand, and crosses to take her in his arms. One hand to her dainty waist, the other to the back of her neck. And he pulls her into a hungry kiss that conveys how much he had missed her, being parted from her all day. After he's made her knees weak, and her legs shiver in wanton arousal. He pulls away. Both hands now on her neck as he leaves her gasping for air when he retreats. His hot breath fanning against her lips.

"You may not. And I will tell you why. I came to the ward tonight. Ticked off, and with my nose put out of place because I thought you'd taken the choice to put work before our time together. But then I _saw_ you... I saw you sat talking to that man with one arm as you gave him comfort, and made him smile. I watched you tease and chide a patient for the sake of his own silly good. I knew then you hadn't chosen your nursing over me... But that I had been selfish once again. There were people who needed your help, more so than I. How can I be mad at a woman who spent her time today, saving lives?" He asks her.

She smiles. Clutching at his arms. He nuzzles his forehead to touch hers. Closing his eyes. And sighing a moan in pleasure as he held her in his arms.

"... And then. I thought. Well. If Mohammed won't come to the mountain. The mountain shall come to him." He smiles. Gesturing to the table behind him. She kisses him for that kindness. He draws her closer, the hot look in his eyes letting her know he intended to kiss her once more... She pulls back. Gasping a smile as one hand slid south to grab her bottom.

"I should warn you. I'm in dire need of a bath. And I can barely keep my eyes open. I don't know what I want more, a drink, or some sleep..." She sighs happily. Stroking his hair. One finger sliding lovingly along his pale, sharp cheekbone. Drinking in the sight of that adoring face. Even sans scar. To her, he was still the handsomest man to ever walk the earth.

"Why don't we start with that drink, then, my love?" He asks. Helping guide her to the table. Helping her to take a seat. She flushed wildly, hot, as she sat down. Because then he leaned in, his warm fingers toying with a curl of hair at her nape. And his lips lowered to her ear.

"And as for the bath... I'd _quite happily_ assist you in that venture _also.._." He flirts. And when she meets his mischievous eyes once again, she can't help but notice he looked terribly _determined_ in that quest.

 

~

 

 

 


	12. Secrets and Opportunity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Un bacio ancora - Rocco Trimarchi
> 
> Un Bacio Ancora - One Kiss More...

 

 

 

~

 

"Do _you think._.." Thomas asked, his coarse, rough, morning voice grating against her ears like gravel. They had shared another exquisite night abed last night, and were consequently naked as a result. She felt his warm, inventors fingers slide along her shoulder. His lips joining to her silken skin not long after. Kissing over one of his favourite moles that pocked her pale body.

"... That because of the strict social times we find ourselves in. Miss James. When a single man can't so much _as touch_ a single woman. That our _sheer, overwhelming_ need to make love, quite as often as we have done, is fuelled by a deeper, more salacious desire to be all the _more promiscuous?"_ He enquires.

 _She chuckles sleepily_. Opening her eyes to her sun drenched bedroom, to peer across at him over her shoulder. He lay behind her. His hips keenly pressing his lower body into her own. She shuffles round, he lifts his arms to tuck her into his pale chest. He smelt like sleepy bed sheets, and the musk of male sweat. He enclosed his arms about her. Pulling her so they were pressed skin to skin.

" _Yes. Dear heart._ Why don't you know, It's the _only reason_ I allowed you in my bed." Vianne teases with that fabulous, cheeky smile _he adored_ seeing. _He can't help it._ He smiles too at the sight of her own. His hands slides under the covers, down over her hip, and _squeezes_ the fleshy globe of her rear.

" _Cruel_ woman." He smiles, not taking his eyes off her. His eyes creasing at the sides with the force of his smile.

"I think we keep on ending up in each other arms, _and bed sheets,_ because you and I _both know it's inevitable_ that we should _do so."_ She adds. " _It's astonishing_ to me how _very right_ this feels." She tells him.

" _I'm sorry_ it wasn't always so. _You've no idea._ Vianne I will regret not being _a good husband_ to you for _the rest_ of my life." He tells her earnestly. Guilt drowning those expressive eyes. As he stroked a pretty coil of hair back past her cheek.

"From that _very first_ kiss. Stood on my doorstep, in the pouring rain. _I was condemned_." She explains to him. That made his heart hurt. Because how had it escaped his notice _she was besotted, body and soul with him,_ and he barely gave her _any indication_ that he _returned those feelings._

" _Oh, my_ love..." He sighs. Taking her face in his hands.

"I... Back at Allerdale. Even when we were alone. I could never seem to, _fully,_ disclose _how I felt_. Because I was certain the walls _had ears..._ Now I am relieved of that _, burden._ Let me make it _evidently clear. Vianne._ Before _you,_ I felt like my life was rehearsed. Ball after ball, flattering girl after girl. Doing nothing more than being a vessel for Lucille's greed and monetary needs. She kept saying to me, " _this one will be the last. Then it can be us, for eternity. Just love and death."_ But I _couldn't... Would not,_ let _her_ get _to you_. I tried with all my might... But then you.... _left anyway."_ He explained.

It was her turn to feel rotten. Here he was pouring out his heart. And she _still hadn't told him_ about the contents _of her own._ She so badly wanted to let them loose.

" _Well_. I'm sorry there had to be _such tragedy_ and heartbreak on our routes back to one another." She swallows. stroking his ace.

Their intimate, pillow talk made all the more heartfelt. As they lay in one another's arms. Bare and vulnerable. And they had both been as such, many times before. Brutalised by his family and suffocated by his sister. And she, orphaned as a small child, and then thrown, after her heartache, at the mercy of a man who broke her bones, bruised her, and beat her. In their separate ways, they had both been battered, and mangled by life, and love.

 _"I'm not_." Thomas tells her. Still stroking her coppery hair. _Admiring her._

Being free of his _biggest_ demon two years ago, had liberated so many things for him. Of course, in his anger and rage, he had completely put aside the love he previously had for his sister. He could only focus on all the horrible things she'd made him suffer through. _The murders. The grief. The rage_. He was _dangerously fed up_ of living under her iron fist. And then along came this red haired, _saviour._ Vianne was a godsend in more ways than one. _She was his salvation._ And _she had saved him_. She'd made him s _ee what true love, caring, and nurturing was. Being with her was the first time he felt like his life wasn't shrouded in cold shadow._

She sighs. Pressing a kiss to his hand. She could see sometimes. A _sadness_ flare in his eyes. _He had lost one woman he loved to gain another. And no matter how horrid the circumstance was, it was bound to have a deeper hold on him than he let on._

_She wants to tell him. But somehow, now didn't seem like the right time.... In her gut she knows she'd feel down to the very marrow of her bones. when the right time was. She didn't want to spoil this moment._

" _When_ do you need to leave for work?" She asks.

The sun had only just risen. But it was full and bright. And promised the day would be a happy one. He had mentioned last night that he needed to make a call in at the office. Check the yard was running along without him. His office was installed in a large factory come foundry in Richmond.

"I'll go before eight. _If_ I can stomach tearing away from such a naked _beauty_." He smiles.

Vianne was biting the bullet. She knows she had to try and tell him somehow. _And her courage flares._

" _Well... Why don't_ I come and relieve you of a lonely lunch hour? I haven't got to help Harriden until this afternoon. We could...go for afternoon tea if you cared for it?" She asks. Her brain tells her that Saint Anthony's was virtually five streets over from Thomas's factory workplace. _Could she stomach taking him there? Letting him know the truth?_

"I'd _adore that._ You _be careful though._ " He warns her. "Start flaunting that beautiful face and figure on the factory floor, I could _quite rightly have mutiny_ on my hands from my workers." He flatters, winking at her.

She laughs at his honeyed words. _He always did have a silver tongue. And he always found ways to put it to good use._

"I thought gentleman of _your calibre_ , Mr. Sharpe, only flattered women, in order to _get them into_ situations much like the ones we _presently find_ ourselves in. _Now_ , your gallantry seems rather _superfluous. Does it not?"_ She teases.

"There is a _beautifully naked_ woman in my arms. Miss James. Whom I made c _ome undone, screaming_ my name the _whole night through._ I flatter her when I see fit. _Naked or not."_ He lusts, his eyes growing dark.

Before she can point out that he would be late for work should he carry on. Her eyes flutter back in her head, and she sighs wantonly as his lips find _that certain spot_ on her neck. He feels her body shiver, his blood ran hot and his ardour started to stir.

He doesn't have time to be gentle with her. _Not this morning._ He flattens her on her back, harshly grabbing her hands and pinning them up over her head. Making her supple curves arch up, exposed, prostrate under him as he asserts himself between her split thighs. Those predatory eyes rake over her body. Over her pert nipples, and her heaving chest. He's assessing her like he wants to swallow her whole.

" _Thomas..."_ She gasps softly. Her voice hoarse with lust and he'd barely even started yet. He trailed his lips over the pulse point in her neck. Feeling _it thrum_ against his lips. Smirking as he felt it. _Quickening. Like a carnivore would sense it's preys pulse erratic in it's fear._

_"You keep your hands where I've put them."_

He tells her firmly. She nods. Complying. Eager for his next move. Retracting both hands, he skims down to her ribs, and his mouth swoops down to capture a rosy peak in his hot mouth. His tongue toys with it. Driving her to distraction. Making her buck and writhe, and her head thrown back, exposing that long neck. He feels her toes curling against the sides of his thighs.

His head travels lower. Leading kisses down the centre of her body. _Not stopping._ Even when he got to her _sweet_ cleft. He trails his fingertips through her dark thatch of hair. She gasps shakily again. Trying hard to obey his wishes. She moans gutturally. Clutching her hands, _hard,_ into the pillow behind her head. Biting down her lip.

He kisses her. Right at the very heart of her womanhood. A jolt of longing tears through her body. He liked toying with his belongings, did Thomas Sharpe. Her moans were music to his ears.

More so when his notorious silver tongue lapped and lapped at her, coaxing pleasure to flutter through her veins. Bursting through her body like tidal waves. Her back arches, and she cannot believe the carnality of the sounds, moans, that they are both making. He groaned as he dragged his lips across her, and stroked two long fingers to plunge deep inside her. Keeping his mouth on that little pearl of pleasure. Her sex sucked _ravenously_ at his appendages. And through strands of that wild raven hair, he looked up, seeing her strain against his ministrations. _She was crying out gods name, closely mingled with his own._

She looked _so beautiful. Breathtakingly so_ , when he was pleasuring her. _A sight he could watch for eternity. Her face contorted in a soundless cry of ecstasy. Her body shuddering as her legs wrapped around his shoulders, urging him closer._

He can't take it. She was eager for more. And he ached to give it. He has to be inside her. He snatches himself away from her with a snarl, and one hand presses open her right thigh, he guides himself to her wet sex, and drives in deep with one push of his hips. Their bodies slap together, and his mouth _crashes_ down to her own.

He allows her hands to move now. Especially as those small, dainty things grapple for his shoulders, the sting of her nails biting into his back urges him on. He growls against her neck. Plunging himself deeper into her velvet heat. His free hand, that didn't clutch at her breast, folded her thigh up and over his hip. She can feel their pelvises gyrate, matching the speed of the other. Their bodies flush with heat, the sensation of one another's weight and skin only fuelling the raging desire. His teeth dig into her neck, nibbling at her delectable skin.

 _"Every time_ I touch you. _God._ Even when _I'm inside you,_ _still making love_ to you..." He groans. " _All_ I can think... _Is that I want more.._. " He moans, bucking his hips faster. Seeing her groan as she clutched at him harder. Her dark blue eyes taking in the sight of him as they made love. That primal, dark lust in his eyes as he gave them both pleasure.

" _You have me. All of me..._ Oh _god. Thomas...you have me..._ " She sighs. He watches her bite her lip. And that almost makes him come undone.

 _But he can't. Not yet._ He helps her along. Rubbing his thumb in pressing circles around that tight pearl that makes her shout loudly. But when her legs start to shiver again. He knows he's doing _something right._

The pleasure comes to a urgent peak. He grabs her hips, and slams into her hard. Adoring the sounds of their bodies as they entwined sharply. _Slapping together_. He takes her face in his hands, and kisses her. _They groan into each other's mouths._ Shouting and muffling their release. _Coming powerfully undone together._

When he finishes coaxing out _every, single, ounce_ of pleasure he could wring from their encounter. Panting, he leans over her. Resting his forehead on her shoulder. Kissing her dewy skin.

"Careful. Or you'll _be late_ for work... _My dear. The boss_ can't be seen to _be unpunctual."_ Vianne sighs. Raking a hand through his onyx hair.

He gathers her _closer, if that was even possible_. Cupping her head. He kisses her again. _Deeply._ His thumb stroking over her ear and jaw. The way he held her _so possessively_ made her feel _safe, adored_ and _desired._

"I can be _as unpunctual_ as I like. With _this beauty_ in my arms. There's a danger _I may never be on time_ , ever _again."_ He winks.

  
~

Whether he parted from Vianne. He felt as if he were leaving a part of _his heart behind_. But the thought of returning to her soon, put _a spring_ back in his step. He strode proudly off the the Richmond factory that morning after bedding _his beautiful_ ex-wife.

As soon as he stepped foot across the factory threshold, he is plunged straight back into the world of mechanics and engineering. Of pistons, the scent of motor oil, frayed fan belts, head gaskets and manifolds. His mind turning from leisure to industry. He strides to his workshop slash office, and before he can even set down his briefcase in the desk, he is roped into helping on the factory floor.

His day passes quickly in _a blur_ of dynamics and difficult machinery. At one point, he is on his back, under the stubborn contraption he invented, swearing the _cursed thing,_ into either _oblivion,_ or _working order._

His white shirt sleeves were rolled up, and this leaves him in a black waistcoat and breeches. He was virtually up to his elbows in grease and muck. Trying in vain to fix a loose, misbehaving, spur gear that had come off it's tracks, with a dial calliper. He was wincing up at the machine. Muttering little pleas to god that it _would work_ after his interference.

"Come on, _you bloody nuisance.._." He talks encouragingly up to it. Hearing the clatter and bustle of the factory floor going on around him. _But he didn't hear the sound of a pair of heels heading his way..._

"What's that old saying?..." Comes a sweet, silvery voice that he instantly recognised. It makes him grin instantly. He couldn't see the source of such a lovely voice. As he currently had his head halfway under the main bulk of his life's work. But when he ducks his head out, he sees his biggest, most beautiful distraction beaming down at him.

Copper hair perfectly coiffed in a chignon. Kitted out in a blue velvet dress, and navy drop sleeved jacket. With diamond droplet earrings dangling from her lobes, and a dark bowler hat perched over her eyes, pinned to sit low on her hair. _Looking as gorgeous as ever._

"... It's either, _a bad workman_ blames his tools. Or, that one about speaking to inanimate objects _kindly,_ and treating things _how you_ want to be _treated yourself_..." She grins. Folding her gloved hands as she leaned against the nearest, safest, table.

Looking over her shoulder, at the intricate blueprints spread out behind her. Pinned to the surface with dividers, compasses and scale rules. The blueprints looked _terribly beyond_ her comprehension. They were both engineers of a _different sort._ He of machinery. She of anatomy. _Both were detailed trades._

He _groans,_ and the sound takes her back to that morning, when they were abed. But he then heaved himself up from under the thing, into his feet. His clothes flecked with dust and muck. His hands were slathered all over in engine grease. And he even had _a smudge_ of it on his forehead. But he had that determined, steadfast _glow_ of a man who looked as though _he very much_ enjoyed his profession. Which he knows he did beyond all doubt.

He daggers a glance around him. Seeing that a few pairs of male eyes were remaining _fixed_ on her. The rare sight of _a beautiful woman_ on the factory floor. In amongst the muck, grime and incessant whirring of machinery. It was _no place_ for a gentle woman. But Vianne looked right at ease, _and at home,_ by _her lovers_ side.

"Well. Kind words will _be wasted_ , on this _shrewish machine._ _She's as stubborn_ as anything _I've known_." He tells. Reaching behind her for a rag on which he wiped his hands.

She blushed when she thought of what those hands had done to her that very morning. He saw it also. When he leaned in close. He could smell the alluring french perfume on her neck. It clung to her bed sheets too, he noticed, and after he made love to her, he could sense it lingering on his skin too. It was _intoxicating_.

After he did clean his hands, he took hers, and kissed it.

"You. Are the most _enticing_ lunch break from work I've had in a very long while." He smiles. Winking at her in a lusting way. That was when he noticed she had a hamper slung to the crook of one elbow.

"May I enquire as t _o the occasion?"_ He asks. Nodding to the wicker basket. Still wiping his hands. Grease was, literally, a slippery customer of which to rid himself of. She smiles. Lugging the basket further up onto her hip.

"Our luncheon. Is the occasion. And I hope you have an appetite. Hot, homemade chicken pot pie. All the trimmings. Buttered potatoes, cabbage. And two bottles of ginger ale, with Jeanie's excellent Chester pudding if that doesn't satisfy your hunger." She tells. He wasn't even hungry, but after hearing that list. _He was suddenly famished and his mouth watered._

He leaned _closer_ to her then. His smile growing completely _wicked._

" _Depends_. To _which_ hunger of mine are you referring?" He asks slyly.

"The _culinary kind_." She smiles back. Equally as flirtatiously.  
  
He steps away before he causes outrage and scandal. _They saved that for behind closed doors_. He grabbed his jacket, and leads her through to his office. Closed off from the floor by a wall of windows. He opens the door for her, letting her pass through. She smiles at the scene before her. Even if no one told her this was his office, she'd know it from the personal touches alone.

It was unorganised, a little cluttered. But stuffed to the brim with half finished inventions made from a _brilliant, kind mind_. Tiny metal creations, contraptions and half finished toys. Littering the shelves, or clumsily collapsing to heaps on his desk. There is a worn, expensive scarlet wool rug on the floor, the fire burns merrily, as does the oil lamp on the desk. The walls were a washed shade of midnight blue. Crammed with framed blueprints and maps. And a homage to Isambard Brunel sits in one frame.

She places the hamper on the desk, and takes off her gloves. Thomas shuts the door behind them. Coming up behind her, he sweeps a coil of her hair aside, and presses _a kiss_ to the join of her neck, and spine. Closing his eyes. _Humming in bliss against her skin._

" _Despicable_. Mr. Sharpe. People may see us..." She worries, looking outside the windows to the factory floor. Biting let lip as she feels his on her skin. _His kiss sends shivers through her bones._

"Get your coat off. Miss James. I'll unpack _the food._ " He promises, moving around her as she peels off her outer layers in the welcome warmth of his office. He unlatched the lid, diving in for the warmed pies and _all_ the trimmings.

She un-pins her hat, and lays it on his desk. Rounding it to have a closer look at the pictures on his wall. Her hands on her hips as she examines them curiously. Tilting her head. Thomas watches her being inquisitive. Smiling at her for that trait he _so adored_ and _admired._ When she turns back, something on his desk made her halt in her tracks. There were _two_ silver picture frames on his desk. _She was in the both of them._

One was a _wedding photo._ Both him and her, side by side in wedding attire. Stood at that chapel in Gretna green. And the other, was simply her. A portrait. She'd gifted it to him _all the way back_ when they were _courting._ Black and white, she was elegantly posed. Her hair coiffed, and wearing a fine high collared dress. That spears warmth right into her very heart. Thomas looks up. Seeing her admire the pictures. One hand gingerly reaching up to touch the top of one of the oval frames. He sighs a smile.

"None of.... _Your family?"_ She asks softly. _He knew full well she meant Lucille. She just couldn't bring herself to say it. And he didn't blame her._

"They _aren't_ the ones _I missed."_ He tells her. Smiling gently.

_She has to tell him. She had to tell him now. She was waiting for the right moment. And this was it. She'd never forgive herself if she didn't take it. Grab it tight and take that risk. It was too great to let it pass gently._

"Thomas... _I've_ . There's been something... on m _y mind now for..._ _Quite_ a while. And _it's._.." She stammers. Wringing her hands together, _nervously._

He blinks. Tilting his head to urge her on. But when she opens her mouth. A _sharp rattling knock_ to the door cuts her off. She blinks. Jarring out of the moment as Thomas, frowned apologetically, and went for the door handle. A worker gave his apologies for his interruption. But told Thomas something brief about a frayed belt and a loose gear shaft.

He turned back to her, leaning close. _Kissing her solidly_ on the lips as he cupped her head. " _I'm so sorry._ You can start _without me_ if your hungry. _I just_ have to see to this urgent matter..." He smiles. Kissing her hand, before he slides away. Off onto the floor, away to _fix and tend_ to things.

Vianne watched him go. _She sighs. Heavily_. She wished she could mend things _as readily, as adeptly as he could._ As it was, the moment, yet again. Had _slipped through_ her fingers.

 

~

 

 


	13. Lonely Damsels, Ransoms, and White Knights

 

~

  
However eerie the empty lecture hall was, even in the passing shadow of a dark, cloudy afternoon, it was _doubly eerie at night._ The empty, pine panelled halls echoed on for what felt like days. And when her workspace was lit only by the company of three oil lamps, it made her realise just how perilous the place seemed. In the flickering lowlight, she sits at her desk, opposite Dr. Harridens, going through today’s medical lecture notes. But as she heard the carriage clock on the mantel chime 1 in the morning. She takes off her spectacles and rubs her strained eyes.

She sighs. Thinking it was most probably adequate to take a break. The words on the paper now wriggled, squirmed and writhed like inky black worms on the journal pages. Her eyes were raw and tired, and her brain now rather _runneth over_ with all the medical expertise she was cramming into her head. Ticking over with the prognosis for scrofula, recognising rheumatic fever that came along with the diagnosis of scarlet fever, the ratio of carbolic rinse to dress wounds according to whether it was an abrasion or a laceration. _She’d be lucky not to recite anatomy textbooks in her sleep._ She shuts the book. Closing her eyes and rubbing her sore neck.

She leant back into the cradle of her creaking chair. The aches of being hunched over her desk flaring through her body. Squinting at the pages in the dim half light now taking it’s toll. She had relaxed her dress to the point of informality. Her white blouse was unbuttoned, just the top button. And she had rolled it up to her elbows, and loosened her russet coloured tie. Her heavy grey skirts were a thick wool, but even through the layers, in her black buttoned boots, her feet and legs are _still cold_. _Freezing_ from the drafty floorboards under her feet.

She stands. _Sighing_ , crossing over to her tiny female spec of vanity that she allowed herself to enjoy. A small, gilded mirror hung to the wall, near the fireplace. Over by the glass vase of crimson roses. Also her little indulgence. If Harriden could display his ugly, but scientific, jars of skulls, and various bones, housed in domes. Then she had told him he could atleast humour her a bunch of roses, as her something pretty to look at. He'd _laughed so_ at that.

She gets to the mirror. Tutting at herself when she saw her reflection. She had a smudge of ink on her cheek, which she wiped away with the back of her hand. Her scalp was starting to ache with the tautness of her strict chignon. She withdrew the bite of her silver hair clip, and removed several pins slotted into her thick red hair. It tumbled down her back, and she sighed a moan with the release of it. The curls tumbled down to her shoulders. Not wanting to let all of it completely wild, she tames half of it back into a half up, half down arrangement. Scrutinising herself in the mirror. The pale skin that made her dark under eyes stand out starkly.

She takes one last survey of her tired face, before she walks across to the oil lamp over on the doctors desk. She dims it right down so it extinguishes. Back on her own desk, she reaches over and stacks up all the journals and text books she has to remember to take home with her, for more studying, and the medical-

A loud _groan_ of a whining floorboard interrupted her internal reverie. It echoed across the dark lecture hall, rippling across the high, glass ceiling. That whine she knew. It was the familiar shriek of when someone opened the door, high up above, in the theatre.

She turned her head, her hands slowly putting her books back down as she looked up through the dark space. Unable to see anyone stood in the doorway in the darkness, her blood chills a little. She swallows in trepidation. Uneasiness ebbing in. Like the passing tide of a cool shadow washing over her on a sunny day. It makes the hair on the back of her neck prickle, standing up sharp.

“ _Hello?_ Is _someone there?”_ She asks. The silence deafening, blaring back at her as a response. She almost didn’t recognise her pitchy voice when she spoke. It made her chest go tight, hearing the apprehension, and tumult she could recognise in her own voice.

Scanning round the room. She steps out into the rounded semicircle of the ‘ _anatomy pit’_ as Harriden put it. The stage area where the rectangular cadaver slab stood. She glances over the seats. Her blood pricking when a masculine. disembodied, strident voice bellows out confidently. It’s speaker hidden in the shadows provided by the edge of the room.

“ _It’s_ Vianne James. _Ain’t it?”_ Came the exclaim. The tones of confidence, twined with an unhealthy sounding curiosity in such a voice, makes her go _rigid_.

She doesn’t need to strain her eyes any longer, for the mystery speaker roams forth from his hiding place. _He’d been here_. The other day. Though she didn’t know it. He was just another face amongst the many. Sat in the audience. Amongst the students, the doctors and all others who attended the lecture. He wore a bowler hat, and dark, inconspicuous clothing. He was a man no one _ever looked twice at._ And that made his life a veritable stroll in the park.

He was too far away for her to make out the finer details of his facial features. But he was smiling. And it wasn’t a smile that looked genteel in it’s presentation. That smile scared her.

“Can I… _Help you?”_ She asks with a frown. He smiles wider. Moving closer. His hands stuffed leisurely in his pockets. He walked along the back row of seats, coming to the stairs in the middle. Directly up above her, gazing down at her. His lack of an answer and continuing leer make her shrink back into the study doorway. Trying to make herself look as small and unappealing as was possible.

After she speaks. She realises how _absurd_ her statement sounds. It was the small hours, and this man was cornering her in the dark, empty lecture theatre. And her etiquette is so heavily infused into the very marrow of her bones that, she asks the dangerous man, whom she was alone in a room with, _if she can help him in any way…_ If she wasn’t _so terrified,_ she’d have laughed at the _illogicality_ of such a thing.

The door whines again. Like a third stranger shrieking in on their stark conversation. Her lips part and she pants in shaky fear when she sees two more men, pushing open the door from the other side. The both of them dressed as scruffily as the first assailant. The incoming two had the same level of dishonesty about them.

“ _You’re_ Henry St. Clair’s bird? _Ain’t ya?”_ The first one asks. Slowly coming down the steps.

She let out an exhale of disbelief. Mixed with fear.

“ _No_ I _am not…_ ” She tells them. Shaking her head. “We.. _Broke_ our engagement. _We’re not_ …” She explains shakily. Swallowing in fear.

“ _Thing_ is…” The first one started, coming down the stairs. Standing still at the bottom. Moving slowly. Like a feral beast would toward it’s desired prey. Vianne clutched the doorframe behind her. Her knuckles white. Her nails dug into the wood. And her hands ached with the strain of how hard she clutched.

“That, regardless of how it stands b'tween you and him. He’s told us that we can get what’s due… He owes us. Owes us _a hell_ of a debt. And he’s in _quite_ a bit of trouble. He told us we could get what we wanted out of the red headed one, who works in the doctors office.” He explains.

Vianne frowned. “What does _he owe you?”_ She asks with a furrowed brow. Henry had been find of drinking, certainly. Had that addiction to stupor extended to gambling too, now? All of it went to prove he really was no respectable gentleman. She knew that already. But she was just realising how much of a blackguard he truly was.

“ _A lot.”_ Bowler hat spoke. His eyes widening as he spoke. Still grinning. Now be was closer, just across the other side of the surgical table, she could see his yellowed teeth in his sneer, the big, rubbery lips that made up his menacing leer. His eyes were dark, and he had broad, stubby features. His eyes shone unnaturally bright though. Consumed with gleaming intimidation.

Now he was nearer, she could definitely make out his clothes. The swathing dark coat. Scuffed but expensive shoes, a tweed waistcoat and trousers getup, exorbitant clothing, that told her he was well paid. She didn’t even want to think or know about the minutia of his profession.

She shuffled back, as he took another step. His eyes wickedly devoured her. Relishing in the diagnosis of her fear.

“Why are you here? All of you, What do you _want_ from me?” She asked tersely, her anger simmering. Her breathing ragged now. The two others, moved down the stairs behind him. Their stances just as intimidating as that of their associate.

“ _Payment_.” Came the sneer from the first one. She whimpered, and then she acted.

She tore round the doorframe, throwing the door shut, he slammed into it, and she scrambled across the office, hearing the glass break. And his grunts as he rammed the door open to get her.

Her mind was stretched thin, jolting and scrabbling, trying to think what she could do. Reminding her this was terribly, horribly, real. Her scatterbrained mind, in the face of panic, remembered the surgical scalpels stored in her bag. She was on her knees now, breathing fast and heavy. Her hands struggling to reach it. Her fingers find the corner, and she tips it over, hearing it clatter and clang as the contents bashed together. Frenzied, she digs through with her bare hands looking for it. Her knees digging into the shards of broken glad from the door. She feels the hot pain and searing warmth that told her some shards had bitten into her skin, shredding her knees, drawing blood.

But she ignores it. She has to try and fight, fight to protect herself. It wasn’t as if it was a foreign notion to her. So far, she’d spent half her life doing so. She was no stranger to it.

With shaking, fumbling fingers, she managed to clutch the cold metal of the handle. But her assailant has other plans. She feels his thick fingers grab a fistful of her hair. She yells as it burns and sears agony through her scalp. He pulls her back, dragging her away from the overturned bag. She tried. She claws at the floor with her bare hands. Her fingernails scraping into the dirty wood.

That was before she felt a burst of dizzy blackness thud into the side of her head. She collapses to the floor, feeling the cold, daggering, jagged splinters of glass skitter under her bare hands, she felt sick, her head plucked apart by the agony that let’s her know he’d hit across the back of her head with something heavy, and blunt. Her whole mind drifts. She feels her breath leave her, and her head slumps to the floor. She tries to reach up to touch her tender head. Her eyes screwed shut.

Through her blurry eyesight she can see him look over her, someone behind, hands him a bottle. And he produces a rag from within the confines of his pocket. She tries to get away, groaning, writhing out of his grip. But she can’t. He shoves her shoulder back, pinning her down, and presses the cloth to cover her nose and mouth.

Her cries are muffled into the cloth that his hand forces down over her face. She tries to clutch at his arm. _But she’s too weak._ He bats her hands away. And the panic flares anew when she smells the familiar, sweet, cloying anaesthetic on the rag. It was strong. Strong enough to tell her it was a pure solution. _A pure solution of Chloroform._

Her eyes go wide with fear, brimming with tears. But after two or three laboured breaths. Her eyes slowly blink, and then slide shut, her breathing grows shallower, and shallower. And all her fighting resolve is slowly, _drained away_ and _gone._

  
~

  
She opens her eyes again, meeting the murky half light of the glass ceiling, high above her. She couldn’t see the stars up above in the heavens. There was too much smog clouding up the sky. And when everything comes flooding back, she frowned and moans.

The pain in her head made her damn sure it had been split in two, and her consciousness feels heavy. Still like it was suffocated under the heady intoxication of being drugged. She whines, trying to move her head, but when she tries to move her arms and legs, she wriggled harder as she found they were bound. She didn’t know why. But she soon found out.

She summoned her strength, and when she properly looked around, she saw her legs, and her arms were bound. And she was tied, tight, to the cadaver table.

“She’s _awake_ , 'Arry.” Came a gruff voice, she turned her aching head and saw one of them. Sat in the front row, watching over her with cruel eyes and a horrible smile.

She turned her head, and suddenly her breath came in starts as the bowler hat one strode over. He stalked right across to her, fisted his hand into her hair again, yanking tight. Causing her more undue pain. She keeps her eyes on his hand when she sees him hold a silver scalpel, that flashes a darting silver gleam in the half light, and when he presses the blade to her throat. She whimpers.

“ _Now_ …” He breathes calmly. “We’re gonna get they payment outta ya. _One way. Or the other._ And _trust me_ sweetheart. None of 'em are _pretty_.” He pledges to her. Whispering harshly into her ear.

“I-I haven’t. I _can’t_ …. Give you anything. I haven’t _got much_ money…” She fibs. Resolutely hoping it would be enough. Trying to bargain with the madman who was currently pressing the sharpest medical room available, to her throat.

“Your _lyin_ ’ darlin.’ I wouldn’t do that if I was you. We know _how wealthy he is._ And if he can’t see it in his interest to give us our money. Then we take it out on his lady.” He snarls down to her. His face was close to hers. Close enough for her to feel his hot breath on her skin. He smelled of ale, body odour, and stale smoke.

“Henry _doesn’t_ care _about me!_ We broke our engagement. _We’re estranged. I'm not his lady!_ ” She cries loudly in protest.

He sneers. And laughs. And a couple of the others chuckle too. “D'you _hear that_ lads? She _said St. Clair…”_ He asks cruelly. Where he’d straightened up, he grabbed her hair again and got close to speak to her. She winces again.

“I _didn’t mean_ St. Clair. Darlin’ I meant that rich inventor who seems to have _snagged ya._ You see, Henry had you watched, he did. sweetheart, _watched like an 'awk._ He had you followed, even after he finished with ya. It seems that Sharpe bloke thinks the _bloomin’ world o’ you._ And he’d do any thin’ to protect you from being 'urt. And word is, that he’s _rich as Croesus…”_

Vianne felt rage and disgust overtake her body. Flooding from the pit of her stomach.

“St. Clair's very certain that we could get money out of 'im…” He explains.

“Henry told you Thomas would pay up if you you tried to… _Hurt me?”_ She asked. Needing the clarification. She gasps as he pressed the blade deeper.

“ _Oh_. Clever girl _you are? Ain’t ya?”_ He snarls, smiling, his lips tilting to her cheek. She tried hard to jerk her head away from his foul breath and lustful insinuation.

“ _Beautiful_ too. Such pale skin. I can see why Sharpes got you installed in _his bed_ ….” He flatters. His tone making her stomach curl up in dread.

“Damn _Pity, that…._ ” He finalises. Throwing her head away, and removing the scalpel. She breathed uneasily. Hearing his footsteps quieten as he went back into the office. She twisted round to see, watching as he crossed to the now roaring fireplace, and poked something to spear deep into the flames.

“I must say. It does hurt me to know I’ll be ruining such a _pretty_ face. Sharpe definitely won’t be interested in you after were finished with ya'. St. Chair told us that’s _no less_ than you deserve… Letting that _ruinous wastrel_ in your boudoir.” Bowler hat spoke, walking back to Vianne. The long, black poker he held in his hand. And the tip was glowing. Red hot.

She squirmed anew at that. But even she knows her bonds are too tight to escape from.

He stepped closer. Slowly. Savouring the sight of her struggling. _What kind of monsters were these men?_ Happily torturing her under Henry’s insistence that Thomas was her protector. The effrontery of her ex-fiancé to exclaim that he would lay down money to them, if they ransomed her safety…She began to think there were _no good men_ in the world, with honest intentions.

_Every man had some degree of monster, prowling deep within. Always lurking. Like an ugly, beast in captivity._

She couldn’t help her fear. They wanted to hurt her. And she couldn’t fight them. Thomas didn’t know where she was and what was happening to her now… That thought scares her _most_ of all.

“He. He… _doesn’t….Know_ I’m. He can’t give you anything if he doesn’t know you want to _hurt me_ in _exchange for money._ ” She bargains. Whimpering and panting with dread as he raised the poker and set it near her exposed arm, that was bound with rope, atop the table.

“Ere. Give her more of that drug. 'Arry. She’s bound to be _screaming_ soon.” The second one chuckled. Bowler hat agreed, and the second one, stood out of sight behind her, presses that sickly, nauseating cloth to her mouth again. She fought hard against it. The fact they were hurting her was pain enough. But now they wanted to hurt her without her being awake enough to struggle.

She feels the cloth pulled away. And she is groggy and sedate once more. The scent clogged in her node and mouth. Now she was barely conscious. But still enough so to hear their voices, and only just keep her eyes open.

“Come and hold her head steady, Stan. She’s gonna _wriggle_... _I know it…_ ” Bowler hat sneered down at her. She shouted. She begged, and fought, she thrashed and writhed in her bonds. Hot tears fell down her cheeks.

She felt another ones grubby, meaty hands clamped about her forehead. Holding her head still, tilted back to look at the one holding the poker stood before her. She’d no idea where the third was. Probably guarding the door.

“Where should we _mark you then?_ Vianne James?” He asks her mockingly, knowing full well she couldn’t answer. She feels a brisk touch carved over her temple. One of them, stroking her hair in a sickeningly gentle touch, as her head lolled to the side, her consciousness swaying with the drug as it paralysed her sobriety.

She opened her groggy, terrified eyes long enough to see bowler hat tilt her chin all the way to the right, facing away from him. She sobs still, mumbling faint pleas for him not to mark her. Tears squeezed from her eyes all the more fluidly now. She could feel the steam, and white hot heat nearing her skin. It takes all her power to try and edge away. Her tired eyes take in, as wide as was possible with terror, in seeing bowler hats sneer as he was not millimetres away from burning her.

The door slamming open high above in the theatre gathers all their attention. Her two assailants look upwards, seeing the third knocked down the stairs, tumbling to a crumpled pile at the bottom of the steps. Landing on the floorboards, and staying there. His middle marred by a deep cut that was _fatal_.

Vianne didn’t see _any_ of it. Her mind no more than a hazy whirl. She hears commotion, clattering. Fist on flesh, the male screams and grunting of physical, violent, interaction. She drifts in and out, not so groggy as to not feel the searing pain that suddenly flares through her arm, she writhes and cries, opening her blurry eyes to see a dark shape stood next to her. Bowler hat kept good to his promise. He had burned her after all. She could hear his voice mocking someone. The person who burst into the room. She cries aloud all the more when the burning ceases. Her bare arm in _agony_.

It is _so potent,_ she realises she must have gone into shock, her pulse was rapid, and she was clammy. That tells her of the severity of her wound that her brain had otherwise lost. Or been un-privy too in it's drugged stupor.

She wakes again when she feels her arms and wrists rattle. Her ankles are jerked, and her shoulder is being shaken by someone. She gasps, her head drooping to one side, but her face is cupped in cool, callused hands. Truth be told, _in Inventors hands._

“ _Vianne?_ Vianne?! Oh. _Please… Oh, god. Please…_ Vianne?” Thomas pants, lovingly holding her face.

Her eyes open, hooded and with tears springing gently down her cheeks. She barely has the energy to whisper his name. She cries all the harder. Her eyes falling shut once more.

He tears off his clean cravat, and wraps her fresh wound in that. It was sterile and would do until he could get her somewhere safe, and dress it properly.

He rips her bonds off, and sits her up, sliding his hands up under her shoulders, and cradling her limp form up into his arms. Enclosing his hand to the back of her head. She whimpers, in pain, hazy and afraid. The sound of such breaks his heart.

“ _It’s ok. I’ve got you. My love._ I’ve got you. Your safe now. _I promise_ …” He pledges. His voice breaking. He stroked her hair. Holding her tight.

He gathers her up into his arms. Ignoring the three corpses that now littered the lecture theatre. When he saw what they’d tried to do to her. He saw red. He might have killed all of them, he can’t be sure. _And nor does he care._

He tucks her firmly in his hold, in a fireman’s carry. Striding with her limp body up and out the theatre, bounding up the stairs as if she didn’t weigh a thing.

He gets out into the dark halls, and he thinks as he walked where they could go that would be safe. Not back to her townhouse, they obviously knew where she lived and worked. He would not risk leaving her in defended on a hospital ward in case more of them came back. But he knows she must see a doctor about that arm. If left untreated, infection could set in. He knew that was fatal…

He pants, carrying her down the stairs, and out into the empty courtyard, into the dark night. Rain drizzling across London in soft specs turned to courtyard lights to fuzzy orbs. “ _Thomas_ …” He hears her gasp. Whining his name. In pain and confusion. He stops, kissing her head, ushering soft. Calming words to her. “I’m here. My love. I’m right here…” He tells her strongly.

“ _Don’t_ let them hurt me anymore.. _Please_... Don't...” She cries in a plea.

He kisses her hair. Tears now falling from his eyes. Clutching her close. Smelling her hair as he kisses her again. That pale forehead clammy. He knows he has to get her safe and seen too. Soon. And he thinks he knew _just_ the place to take her…

 

 ~

 

 


	14. Oakhampton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Hanging On - Ellie Goulding

 

 

 ~

  
Oakhampton, though it was a country sanatorium, was a grand old ruin. A place time seemed to whave forgotten since the turn of the twentieth century. It had echoing halls, drafty windows and ancient decor. It looked as if some forgetful hospital staff member had mislaid some equipment in a grand home. Mistakenly leaving it behind.

Vianne sat. In her armchair, angled to look out the window, down over the gardens that winter had dulled in colour, and slaughtered. Everything looked grey, to her eye. The windows weeped condensation. And she was sat too far away from the fireplaces warmth to feel the benefit of it, heating up her high ceilinged, drafty room. Of which the crown moulding paint was starting to chip away, and the floorboards were freezing, and terribly loud. It's coldness, lack of character, cracked skirting and eerie silences reminded Vianne very horribly of Allerdale.

She couldn't do much as it was. Of course, Oakhampton had courses for their patients to enjoy. Knitting. Embroidering, still life, and watercolours. But she held little desire to sit out of doors in the freezing cold painting landscapes, or a bowl of fruit atop a pedestal.

Instead, she sits. She stares at the gardens. And she _just about exists._

A nurse came in every hour or so, to check on her. Offer her a cup of tea, or something cheering from the kitchens. With that friendly smile they seemed paid to keep on their faces. She always politely declined. On some days they left a cup and saucer of tea at her side anyway. Still she let them grow cold.

She grew _too thin_ , the doctors said. _Warning her._ She wished good riddance on it.

On the child that _never_ should have been.

They'd warned her she was at serious, _severe_ , risk of being undernourished and not being healthy enough to carry the child. Or give it the sustenance and nourishment it needed. She merely sat silently as they explained it to her. She _didn't want_ to carry or care for this baby anymore. This _damned, annoyance_ of a thing that cost her a husband and a marriage. Some days. _She hated it. She truly did._

She paid little attention to all the aches and pains of her newfound condition. The swollen ankles, the constant backache. The stomach churning nausea, the cravings that were rampant both night and day. She could hardly bear to move sometimes. She just sat in that chair and toiled her days away. Growing weaker, and thinner.

Sometimes she cried, out of nowhere, the sadness, and the loneliness, seized her all over again. The doctor diagnosed it as no more than hormonal mood swings. But she knew the roots of it went _deeper_ than _any mood._

When she wept. Her hands went to cradle the sizeable pregnant bump that was now her only remaining admonition of her Thomas. And she wept til there were _no tears left._ She didn't know if she hated it or loved it.

Hector had visited last month. And had promised to do so again soon when his workload wasn't so strenuous. He'd brought her well-wishes, comforting smiles that concealed his evident speechlessness about her obvious condition, and a brown paper, bag full of fresh grapes, as if she were an invalid. Which, when she was in this place, she supposed thats what she now was. And that was how the world now _saw her_. It was _all_ that she was reduced to. The sad, tragic, spinster, alone and burdened with child.

Nowadays she felt like half of a whole.

A hopeless, useless vessel. Only fit to be filled with despair and anguish. She hadn't felt human in such a long, long time. She felt no more than a carrier for lost hope and the next Sharpe heir.

She, naively, thought her pain had passed. With each day. It grew foggier, distant, and less acute in her mind. But then one rainy, cold, winters day, just like all the others, the pain begins anew. And it was more potent _than any_ she'd felt before.

She had moved to stand, getting up to replace a tattered book on the windowsill shelf. Thinking how rotten it was that all her first edition, leather bound, favourites she'd had to abandon, and leave behind in Cumbria... When a sudden flare of pain bursts through her abdomen. Causing her to stumble forwards and slam her hand to the wall to steady herself. She gasped. Loudly. Knocking the end table over as she staggered. She hears the porcelain teacup that had been sat there, break and smash on the dark floorboards below. But she can't afford to care about that now...

She dreaded feeling the sudden rush of hot fluids dripping down her legs. A terrifying signal that her child was ready, and wished to make it's entrance, kicking and screaming into the world. She didn't feel ready. She grasped at her belly, sobbing as the first ripple of pain flared up through her body. She sobbed a benediction to god. Doubling over. Tears dripping from the corner of her scared eyes. The pain so potent already it was making her toes curl. She could tell, from the off, she was in for a difficult birth, and weeps her eyes out as a consequence.

She tries to call for a nurse, crying before the pain interrupts her once again. She doesn't let out more than a strangled choke. Thundering footsteps barrelling into the room signify that someone had heard her cries of despair.

All of a sudden, pairs of hands grapple her arms, and shoulders and pull her upright. She is manoeuvred over to the bed. Clinging hard onto the palm of whichever hand offered itself to her in comfort, gritting her teeth through the pain.

She is flattened to the crisp, eiderdown of her single bed. The bronze bedstead rattling into the wall as she is settled with a jarring thud onto the mattress. Panting and breathing hard as she helped the nurse strip her of her gown, down to her chemise, and pulling on a starched, white nightdress over her head, instead. Saving the gown from all the trials of childbirth.

She'd _lost count_ of how many times the mind numbing pain swells in her body. But before long, she is sweating, cursing and groaning. Shouting the chipped, flaking, ceiling down.

No one had told her the pain would be as great as this. She cries more when she realises that she had no one to pre-warn her how great the pain would be. She felt like her body was being split open from the inside out with a blunt knife. Gouging out her innards. Fiery _agony_ searing her guts like hell itself. The doctor is sent for, and arrives. And administered her a sip of laudanum for pain relief. But all that seems to do for her is to make the pain _hazier._

She writhes on that bed. In agony. For hours, that felt more like years. Gritting her teeth through it all. Huffing and panting. Soaked to the bone in perspiration, red cheeked, exhausted. Crying because of the pain and then because of the tiredness. Tendrils of hair stuck to her neck and cheeks. And all the while she panted, puffed and pushed. And worked her way through the excruciating labour pains.

And, worst of all, Now more than ever, visions of her ex-husband found their _niggling, devastating_ way behind her closed eyelids. She wanted him. Here. _By her side. Clutching_ her hand. Or _pacing_ outside, _doggedly_ treading the halls, like a dark, dashing panther. Awaiting the news. Or waiting to hear the baby cry.

She screws her eyes shut through the contractions. And when she opens her eyes. She dies all over again when she discovers he isn't there. She knew, his sins were great. Indulging in an incestuous affair with his sister, killing, murdering seducing women at their will, and all just for riches. And at Lucille's bloodlust leisure.

When she found out about their affair. She was both unbelievably livid, yet utterly destroyed at the same time. She felt her heart shatter when she heard. And what she heard them discussing after, it made her wish she had carried on drinking the poisoned tea. So she could slip away and die in her own pit of shame. Hating him for what he'd done. Damning him to hell as she went there herself for _ever_ allowing herself to love _such a man as he._

Actually. That should be, for enduring all that, and _still, loving_ a man such as he. S _he still loved him. Even now_. And she _hated it_ with the fury of a thousand burning suns.

Because she simply didn't want too any more. _She couldn't do it._ Yet her stupid, idiotic heart was invested and she _could not withdraw_ it from him for the life of her.

She thought about his laugh. His smile. The profile of that handsome face masked in deep concentration when he was fixing things. The peppermint and engineering oil scent that clung onto his clothes, that she could detect when he drew near. His kiss. His touch. His callused hands. _Would they have liked to cradle their baby in his arms?_   She thinks on the exact shade of that ravens hair and how it shone in candlelight. That set of piercing eyes, that saw _right through her._ That immovable, unflappable attention span of his that never missed a thing. And yet... It had missed her concealing the _greatest secret of all._

All of it torments her when she screws her eyes shut and _curses his name_ for putting her in this predicament.

It is not so much the labour pains she could hardly stand, but rather the broken fragments of her miserable heart that is causing her the most agony of all. Knowing that after all this pain, she would have _nothing_ to show for it. Hector had assured her it had all already been prearranged.

After the pain stopped. She'd have _no reminders_ of Thomas Sharpe to cling too anymore. _And that is either a blessing or a curse. she can't decide._

Labour moves along at a glacial pace. She stalks the room like a caged beast. Grunting her lungs out. Clutching at the nearest hard object when the pain came again. She wasn't sure how much longer she could take it. The torment seemed to be _never ending..._

She cries out so many times that she couldn't do it. She wants to give up. She doesn't want this child. _Or that she wants to die._ She wants to be dead and buried rather than have to go through the excruciation of pushing one more time. Wiping away her tears, _quickly,_ before the nurse saw them, at the irony of her making such a wish. Considering she had uprooted her entire life, derailed a marriage, and risked ruination trying to preserve the _exact opposite._

She had lied. Tricked. And threatened her way out of a marriage. And in turn, had been lied, tricked and cheated on. What kind of _a mother_ could she be to this baby? W _hat kind of a father did they have? Not even half of a decent one they deserved._ _No child_ should be brought into the world with _a mother as wretched as her,_ with an absent father to boot. Absent by her own doing. Which only makes her cry harder. She had pushed him away, and now she had to deal with the consequences. Dire as they were.

She reflects on this as she grits her teeth through a yell as she bows her head and clutched onto the bedstead with sweating palms, as she stood. The kind nursemaid rubbed soothing circles on her back. Telling her what an excellent job she was doing. How good she was being.

Vianne bit her tongue. So she didn't shout out in a sob that she was doing the absolute opposite. She was doing a cowardly, despicable thing. Carrying the burden of this child all on her own without even telling her own husband she was expecting. She was sure there was a space in hell reserved entirely for her, for that sin.

" _Damn you.._ " She sobs through another stab of pain. "Damn you..." She cries. Head slumping onto her hands. And she's not entirely sure who it is she's damning. Either herself, or the memory of the man she loves, as his face haunts her mind.

"Damn you to hell." She weeps. " _I hate you. Thomas._ I hate you. For doing all you did to me. And yet I _still love you._ You _bastard_... I can't stop. I can't stop loving you... _I want to stop._ " She cried, wailing in her agony. To a very taken aback nurse.

She starts crying all the harder. Wailing all the more. Letting the sadness tear her apart just as the strain of labour was. She finds herself wishing for things she never thought she would.

She wish she'd stayed at Allerdale Hall... She wish she'd let them both torture her and kill her. And subject her to every kind of pain, suffering, and torment imaginable.... Because then atleast, her small mercy would be that she would be free of the crushing, excruciating guilt of having Thomas's baby without him even knowing she was expecting one... She wanted to be dead. She wanted to curl up and simply rot away... She doesn't deserve to cling onto the painful curse, and tragedy that was now her pitiful excuse for a life. She realised she didn't want the baby she'd fought so hard to keep.

The pain was reaching it's peak nowi. And Vianne was entirely certain that she was being set on fire from the inside out. She is coaxed on her back again. Legs spread, pulled wide apart, and writhing on her back in agony as shock waves of pain pour freely and frequently through her. The midwife issues instructions and murmurs of encouragement, telling her when and how to breathe and push. Vianne sobs. Shaking her head. Screaming aloud that she'd changed her mind. She didn't want to do it. She yells and screams her pain. Hot tears searing her cheeks.

But then it suddenly stops. As if someone had muffled all sound from her ears. She pants, and her eyes snap open when she hears something else, whining and pitchy, shrieking and fussing...

Because now, it appeared it was _someone else's_ turn to do the crying instead.

She sees the nurses wrapping a small bundle of blankets right around a squirming, furiously, pink, newborn. It's face gnarled and swollen as it cried. The ugly sound it made piercing her ears. But she cannot take her eyes from it. It's dainty ears pinned back, like moulded pink pastry. And she makes a noise of utter, guttural, _longing_ when she sees it has sticky tufts of dark, _ink black, hair,_ like it's father. Its skin was viciously red. As if it had just been harshly scrubbed all over with a scouring brush.

Vianne is enchanted from her first look, and when the soft, warm and worming, little thing is placed in her arms, she seems to snap into life, placing her arms around it. She cradles the baby to her chest. Watching it protest as it's tiny, starfish hands grappled into the air, reaching for it's mouth or it's eyes. Which when they peeked open, she can see they are the darkest grey, almost black. The ear splitting shrieks stop once the baby catches the familiar scent of their mother, close by.

She strokes the child's sticky head. Not bothering to hold back tears at seeing it had her ex-husbands colouring. _She cries_. And though the midwives, doctor and nurse smile as they think it is in hormonal, overwhelming _joy._ It was actually because she knows in that minute, that she'd _never love anything more_ than this baby she held in her arms. _\- except perhaps for their father_. And the dawning realisation that such feelings _haven't gone away for him, somehow only intensified,_ makes her wail. Sobbing. Rocking as she clutched her baby.

Come tomorrow, she'd have to let them go. _Never to see them again._

Her eyelids start to droop. And her breathing gets shallower. Her heartbeat slows. Before she can register that her body is growing limper and weaker, she just knows she wants to rest her eyes for a good long while.

She feels the small, warm bundle lifted from her grip. Voices rouse around her. Ordering, shouting. Rushing in panic. She feels hands jab between her legs again, pulling and tugging. She doesn't feel the pain, isn't able to see the blood, gore and trial of the second unexpected circumstance that was now unfolding.

She hears nor feels any of it. _Not a single thing._

But as her head sinks back to join with the pillows behind her neck. She sighs, and then comes the comforting tug of sleep.

She drops off the precipice of consciousness, into dreams. And it was alarming how comfortable she became, with the idea of never awakening again.

  
~

  
When she does regain consciousness, she does so slowly.

She gently peels open her eyes. Reunited with the familiar, peeling, ceiling letting her know she was still at Oakhampton. Her eyes adjust to see it was now light outside once more. Daylight sliced in through a thin crack in the heavy curtains. Daggering across the end of her bed.

She blinks. Tasting the foulness of her breath, and her eyes feeling stuck, as if having been glued together in her rest. Her head was pounding relentlessly with the kind of potent ache that made her eyes water.

When she tried to move her body, the flare of pain makes her gasp in a wordless cry. Her voice hoarse from dehydration. Her throat was sore and tender. She didn't even possess the strength to moan aloud in pain. She felt black and blue all over. And from the waist down, she aches in a foul way she never knew she could ache. And the tightness she felt was the bandages and dressings that bound her lower body.

She felt like her entire form had been to hell and back. And then she scoffs in dry amusement. Because in her previous life, she's not all entirely uncertain she hadn't been. Only hell wasn't brimstone and fire. It was snow. Snow and bitter arctic cold, along with a dark, rotting house, and oozing clay the colour of blood.

When she gains enough strength to summon her arms into use. A soft clinking makes her look up, only now realising that the back of her hand was tethered with a thick tube. She winces, glancing up to see a blood bottle, and other antibiotics being fed into her helpless body via a drip stand.

Her free hand fumbles for the bedside. Which it finds, and her fingers graze the soft, flimsy paper of a greetings card.

She looks over, and groans, gripping it in her weak fingers, she plucks it and brings it closer. Through blurry eyes, she sees the front reads _'Congratulations'_ in a sickening calligraphic hand. Swirled with watercolour flowers, and depicting an insipid stalk, dangling a bundle of joy from it's beak.

Her heart _hardens,_ and more tears come before she realises she was sobbing. Glancing around the room again. She notices then, a most painful absence... No noises. No cooing, or shrieking. No bassinet or baby crib. No feeding bottles, clothing, or linen...

_Or Baby._

She flips open the card, reading it's contents. It was from Hector. Who told her that after giving birth, she'd suffered severe blood loss, and had consequently been unconscious for four whole days as a result.

He also assures her that it was the kind thing to do. That as she recovered, the matter would be swiftly dealt with. And she should try and put aside feeling and emotion, to understand that she'd be a ruined, fallen woman forever if she had decided to keep them. They had gone to a good place, to happier pastures. And as soon as she recovered. He would be glad to see her restored back in London. _As if nothing had changed_.

But nothing could be further from he truth. _She could never be that same woman now._

When she comes to the last line, detailing sparse details regarding the sex and weight of the baby, she let's the card slip from her fingers. Fluttering to the floor. She cries for the nurse. Sobbing. Wanting to ease her pain, ease her loss. But they can do no such thing.

They hadn't told her that she'd had _Twins._

Hector had named them after her departed parents. Baby Boy, weighing in at four pounds, one ounce. Christened, Arthur Earnest-James. And Baby Girl, weighing in at three pounds, two ounces. Christened as, Juliette Earnest-James.

Her babies that she'd _never_ meet.

 

~

 

 


	15. Saviours and Suprises

 

~

 

Dr. Harriden stalked, in long, _hurried,_ strides, along the hotel corridors. _His mood was sombre,_ and his temper was shadowed with both _concern_ and _rage_ in equal measure. His arm was braced tightly downwards with the heavy weight of his medical bag. His rude awakening he had considered slightly less so, when the messenger told him that Sir Thomas Sharpe had sent the missive. The frown was wiped off his face completely when they mentioned it said Vianne was in dire trouble. Suddenly, he didn't care that it was quarter past two in the morning. He was awake now. Riddled with a dark, sickening black worry for his work colleague. _For his friend._

When he comes to the prince of wales suite, he stands, rigid, and knocks sharply on the door. Even the unmusical, impatient tones of his knock sounded _rich_ with strife.

Almost instantly, the door is wrenched open from the other side, and the dire face of the man who summoned him appears. It was a handsome face, he thought. Ravens hair, stark white skin, and the garish vermillion of a tear stain of a scar. Made all the more careworn by the black bags of anguish sitting heavily under his eyes.

" _Doctor..."_ Comes the dulcet, severe tone from between the mans thin lips. This man looks as if death it's very frightening self, was looking over his shoulder. Harriden can see, plain as day, the mans suffering was all due to the incertitude of Vianne's current condition.

He widens the door, and the doctor sweeps silently inside. In the wake of the shutting door, Harriden turns as they are enclosed in the half dark, half candlelit extravagance of a formal sitting room. Decorated flawlessly. Huge, arched windows, framed with honey gold light from candelabras. This was the room of not only a man whose pockets were plentiful and deep. But a man who oozed wealth from every pore of his being. Comforts to make up for the fact his life before had been ripe with penury, scrounging about for capital, and debt wherever he could struggle for it.

Harriden could see this man, only in breeches, boots and a white shirt. His dark waistcoat hung at his sides. Smeared with blood. Smudges of it on his pale upper arms, exposed by the rolled sleeves. He stood wearily. Near exhausted by worry.

"I'm sorry to have called you out at such _an ungodly, unsocial_ hour, Doctor. But you are the only one I'll trust to.. _Tend_ to her." He speaks lowly. Harriden nods in complete understanding. In this dark, odd mixture of half light and murky darkness that crept in at the edges of the room. Harriden can also sense a strange aura of guilt radiating from the man before him.

"Who _did this_ to her?" Harriden asks her gravely. growling almost.

"I don't know... And that _terrifies me._ " Sharpe answered in a angered growl. Clearly shaken. Harriden could see his pale hands trembling.

"This way..." He explains, leading the good doctor quickly through the large suite. Pressing open the bedchamber door. Harridens eyes go instantly to the figure prostrate on the large bed. Bundled under the bedcovers. One oil light casts honeyed light from the corner. But save for that, the room was unlit.

Thomas had covered her up so she wouldn't get cold. And placed a moistened cloth on her arm, he had been burned numerous times before from his many inventions. He knew what the stinging burn could feel like, but hers looked a thousand times worse than any wound he'd suffered. The raw, weeping wound nearly covered the entire lower half along her left arm. Just below the elbow, and ending at the wrist. She was barely conscious, ebbing in and out. And when she did wake, she only made whimpering sounds of pain.

Harriden got to work _immediately_. Shedding his jacket, he sat on the side of the bed, and gave her a preliminary examination. She was very clammy, and he was worried about the state of the wound. Whatever caused it hasn't been sterilised and he would have to bathe, and disinfect it. With regular injections to keep infection at bay.

"Fetch a cool cloth for her head. She's very warm. If this wound is infected, I _don't want_ her to start presenting a fever." He instructed Thomas. "Give her _as much_ fluid as she can manage. Keep her cooled, she needs as much medicine as she can take for the pain and that nasty burn." He tells. Thomas nods, scattering for the en-suite.

He wrings a wet cloth under the ice cold tap. It was then he noticed how hard his hands were shaking. Fumbling all the more in the cold. And his reflection awaiting him in the mirror is a frightful one. His face was stark, sallow, pitted and he recognised that feral look of deep rooted sorrow, and fear in his eyes. Lingering, simmering in his chest ready to pounce and choke him if he was weak enough to let it.

He wrings out the ice cool cloth, and paced back through. Harriden was leaning over Vianne, her slim arm in his hand as he bathed the wound in something, getting the foreign dirt out of it so it could heal safely. He watched the water drop and twist down off her arm, into the excess bowl below. All the while she just lay there. Her breathing shallow and uneven. That's what pains him most. The mere fact she was _only just conscious,_ dipping in and out, able to just feel the pain. Not unconscious enough to allow her to feel nothing. _It was torturing him._

He walks back across, and puts the cloth on her forehead. Watching her frown, clearly wincing in her drugged daze at the wound being cleaned. Thomas twines his fingers in her hair. Stroking it as he cups her clammy cheek in his hand and crouched by the head of the bed. His free hand clutching her right arm. Linking through her pale fingers. He can do nothing. _Nothing_ , but paltry pastimes to try and ease her agony. And that hits him the hardest of all. Worst if all was that it makes him feel so _horribly inadequate._ He kisses her fevered brow. He mumbles little pleas of love and devotion. Whispering them to her, trying to stop his tears fall on her.

"Hold her tight. Mr. Sharpe. I have to clean about it now, She may _squirm._ " Harriden forewarned. 

She thrashed all the more when Harriden applied said salve to the wound. She cried out.

" _Don't take them. Don't let them take them away from me. Don't...I love them. They should be with me! Please!"_ She cries. writhing round in a daze. Delirious. Thomas frowns over at Harriden in confusion. Begging for an explanation.

"She's been drugged. She might _be hallucinating._.." Harriden explained. _Though he knew she wasn't._ Erik watched Thomas try to conceal the tremble of his lower lip.

Her body writhing around under the sheets. She fought, struggling against the source of the pain. Thomas clutched her close. Soothing her with gentle, calming words. Stroking her hair and holding her near. Clutching her close to his chest. Looking across anxiously to Harriden. Who gave him, in return, an empathetic look. The two people who loved this woman, shared a worried glance that was both _full_ of their anger, and bitter rage, for the treatment she'd suffered this eve.

Harriden angrily grit his teeth. Dabbing still at her arm. Thomas saw the angered profile of his incensed expression. His dark eyes somber.

"Who could do this? She'll be scarred with this injury for the _rest of her life._.. The pain will have been... _Unimaginable. Unbearable._ What kind of man could do this? cause this amount of harm to someone as _kind_ and _sweet as her?"_ He asked Thomas.

He looked down at her, tenderly stroking her face before he answered the man.

"They were _Monsters_. Not men." Thomas tells him. "I shouldn't have let her go out _alone, tonight."_ Thomas sighs in anger over his inaction.

He then gently lifted her good hand to his lips and kissed it gently. He watched her face all the while, before reaching back for the cloth and dabbing at her head once more. Her head lolled back into the pillows. That pale throat, stretched back, beaded in sweat. As was her forehead. Catching in the sparse gaslight there was to be had in the room.

"She _spoke of you,_ to me, you know..." Harriden spoke up. After Thomas finished watching him bathe, dress and pin the white bandage securely around her wrist. The immaculate dressing reached from elbow to palm. He was carefully laying her arm down straight when he spoke up to Thomas. Such an _idle confession_. Yet it caught him off guard.

Thomas blinked, startled, across at him. The revelation slowly dawning on him. Harriden saw it was the look of a man caught unawares. As if he _didn't deserve_ such a nice thing. Which the Doctor couldn't believe for a second. Most married couples he attended on home calls, the husband waited outside the room, with cold indifference. And didn't want to hear _any singular intimate_ detail of his spouses condition. And the women were very uneasy, mortified, over having their anatomy discussed with a man who was not their husband. But this man, he hadn't left her side. He mopped her brow, he calmed her down. He held her close, loved her. Kissed her hand. Looked as if he was being driven out of his sane mind with worry for her.

"She did?" He asks quietly. Still unbelieving. Harriden nodded a kind smile. His warm brown eyes melted, crinkling at the corners.

"More than St. Clair. _Often_. She told me about, your inventions, how you liked Bach, William Blake's poetry, Rodin's sculptures. How she met you at a Ball like it was any other night... But how she felt, so enraptured afterwards from your meeting her, she said she smiled _all night_ and well beyond into the next day because of you and _your charm_. How you courted her that Autumn in London. And you took her to guy Fawkes night in Regents Park. wrapped her in your overcoat to keep her warm, and kissed her hands to heat them through when she grew cold. She told me once that the scent of roast chestnuts, and bonfire smoke on cold, November air, _would always_ remind her _of you."_ He told. Smiling as he sorted his various medical vials and bottles back into his monogrammed, cracked, leather case.

Thomas looked down at her, squeezing her hands. _Was it possible he just fell all the more in love with her for that? absolutely._

"... Of course. When she spoke of Henry St. Clair, there was, _some,_ affection, at the start, but it faded. And...it was... _Colder._ Words and memories of you fell freely, and fondly. _Lovingly._ I could see it, Mr. Sharpe, she had to force herself to smile when she thought _of him_." He explained profoundly.

"... And then _that night."_ He paused. Angrily exhaling, shaking his head. Sharply rolling down his sleeves after having scrubbed his hands harshly, with a nail brush, in the enamel bowl of clean, warm water on the other bedside. The severe, hiss and scratch of tough bristles against skin made his teeth set on edge and his skin crawl.

" _The night?"_ Thomas asks.

"One of _many._ " Harriden growled. "But that one in particular _will haunt me_ til I]I'm in my grave..." He tells.

"Do you, _know_ about... How he _used to...treat her?"_ He asked carefully. Treading on eggshells. Thomas's heart was in his mouth. So he nods rather than speaks. An odd mixture of rage, guilt and sadness churning around in his stomach.

"I was the one who stitch her up. That night. Tell me, Mr. Sharpe, have you ever dislocated your shoulder?" He asks kindly.

"I have been blessed never to have gone through _such a pain_." Thomas told.

"There's _no pain_ like it. It's the most intense agony of any injury there is. He threw her down those stairs. And even with a separated shoulder, she caught a hackney cab halfway across London, to the royal. All the while she was loosing blood fast from the cuts in her back. I can't pretend to know how excruciating those injuries were. She climbed five flights of stairs with a sprained ankle, to get to my office. Lord help me, I'll never forget the sight that greeted me that night..." He told truthfully. Because he never would.

The lecture theatre doors had burst open, whining, shrieking, and Vianne tore through them. Limping, making her hobbling way through the seats. Sobbing Harriden's name. But not his surname. His doctors title. No. She cried out his first name. Erik. He had burst out his office to get to her, and she collapsed in his arms. Weeping. Her eyes tear stained, makeup seeping down in dark trails over her cheeks. Her eyes red raw, and he could see blood dripping down her shoulder. Blossoming through the back of her dress. Her hands cut to ribbons, and a bruise flowering over her eye. She scrambled for his arms. Pleading, crying through the agony, meeting his eyes. Making him swear, on his life, that he wouldn't let anyone know she was here because a man had beaten her. He agrees. And then he can tend to her wounds. Biting his tongue. Not able to say what he truly wanted too.

Thomas sat, enraptured, eyes glistening tears as he listened through his story. Clutching her hand.

"Mr. Sharpe. I've stitched her up, _more times_ than I can care _to remember._ But I can recall _every injury_. Every black eye. Bruises on her neck, her back and shoulders that she didn't let out _a word_ about. I will not stay silent and let another man torture her. She has been through hell because of that, savage. If I can avoid any more harm coming to her, I will do it with all the _might, fury,_ and _every fibre_ of my being." He promises the man.

"I assure you, Dr. If any harm comes to her, it most _certainly shall not originate_ from _me_. In the past, I have caused her turmoil and hurt, and made a vow to her I never will again. I would give _my life_ in defence of her well-being. _I adore her. I love her_." He speaks clearly. His voice choking on his love for her.

Harriden crooked a smile. 

"I did not mean offence... Sharpe. _Forgive me._ But I am her friend, my intentions are well meant, and the love I have for her, though _not a patch on yours,_ is sincere for her safety." He pledges.

"I understand. _No offence_ taken." Thomas ensures. He frees his hand and reaches over to shake Erik's. He squeezes gently tilting Thomas's hand slightly to the left, into the light. To observe as to the hiss pf pain Thomas made as his fingers tightened. Erik raised brows at the man. Assessing his shredded knuckles with easy, well learned, medical confidence.

"You've _been busy_.." Erik points out. 

"In _her defence_ , I've gained a _good scratch_ and scar or two." He assured the doctor.

Thomas looked down his front, dismayed to see his wound from the alley altercation was seeping through the bandages he'd wound across his torso that very morning before getting dressed. His shredded, black and blue, sore, swollen knuckles grated with white pain when he moved his hand to pluck at his shirt front. He smiled wryly.

"Do I need to tend _you too?"_ He asks with an almost chiding tone. Thomas shakes his head. He needed _whiskey_ and _sleep_ , and the assurance she would _be alright_ when she woke. Harriden could see by the bags under his eyes rest would be the greatest relief for him.

"I'm afraid I made a _bit of a mess_ of your lecture theatre..." Thomas admits sheepishly.

"That's where they hurt her?" Erik asked with horror. Thomas nods wearily. Erik steels his jaw.

"I'll have it _dealt with_ by morning." Thomas assured him. 

"You're a powerful man. I know I am a doctor and I am supposed to heal and save lives. But you find out _who did this, to her_. You find them, and make _them pay_ for the both of us. For doing this to someone whom we clearly both care more than _a great deal about.._." Harriden pressed.

Thomas could see the affection he had for his colleague. On the serious gleam in his eyes, that had previously been so soft, and welcoming. The hard, unamused lines on his face that belied his bone deep anger, rage, at seeing her in such a state of agony once again. Thomas can understand his rage. Caring for his friend when she was bruised from Henry, and now, black and blue from someone else. it was enough drive a sane man _mad with worry._ Thomas smiled. Safe in the knowledge that apart from the ugliness of their separation, and Henry's charming manners, she had found some good people to align herself with in this world. People to keep her smiling, to keep the pain, and darkness at bay.

"She told me how when she started at the Royal, you took her under your wing from _her first day._ She was terrified of making a mistake, or _hurt_ ing someone. And she said you came in, all smiles, jokes and put _everyone at ease._ She wasn't so scared after that. She deserves that... She deserved someone _good, like you. Harriden."_ He complimented.

Harriden smiled at the jerking of that memory. He remembers her first day too. Her eyes full of wonder, her longing thirst for knowledge. Answering ever question levelled at her. Not to be a know it all, but proudly showing she'd grasped for every textbook she could lay her hands on.

"You know she pointed out early signs _of gangrene_ in a patients foot ulcer. Not even matron, or the other surgeons _had picked up on that._ Her observations were _remarkable_... She is a nurse down in the _very marrow_ of her bones." Harriden told him. Thomas smiled warmly. It was the first time all evening the Doctor had seen Sharpe's frosty blue eyes thaw. In fond recalled memories of his Vianne.

"That _sounds like her..._ She told me as a girl and was always the one taking in wounded birds and healing them, setting them free again. She has a nurturing touch... Everyone who knows her, knows _how caring_ she is." Thomas told him. Harriden beamed, nodding in agreement. _That was Vianne all over._

"Anyway. I'd best be going... It's late and the both of you need your rest. She must keep the dressing clean, and dry. And apply salve before any sterile bandages to stop the wound sticking. She'll know the rest when she wakes... But she should be alright for now. She'll sleep. And she may take whatever she needs for pain relief when she wakes..." He tells the man. Moving to the end of the bed. Shirt righted once more. Neat as a pin. Standing proud, imposing, with his arm taut holding his heavy medical bag. The professional, smart doctor once again.

"Thankyou. Again, Doctor. So much, for attending her." Thomas speaks warmly. Reaching across to shake his hand. Thomas fingers were cold, and rigid. And Harriden felt his hands jolt, too swollen to properly grip back.

"You _take care. And rest._ plenty of it. And lots of good food, too. _Heal."_ Erik advises.

"I'll _heal fine._ I just wish the same could be said for _her arm..."_ Thomas spoke in perceptible distress. Going back to Vianme, holding her pale hand in his again. Re-wringing out the cloth to make it cooler. Placing it back on her heated forehead.

"Give it time." Harriden said. "I know it's...horrible. But the horror of this, it will fade. _Eventually."_ He sighs. Thomas nods. And in that nod, Harriden could see his determination. If he needed too. He'd _sit up all night,_ by her bed. Attending her every need. Easing her pain.

"I'll see myself out. And you write me, _personally, again_ , if you need any shred of help. I am a friend to her, and to you. _Both._ If you need one." He explained nicely. Thomas smiled. and nods.

Erik stepped too. He needed a stiff drink _now too_. And his bed. He disappeared around the doorframe. Out of sight.

Thomas nodded. Retaking his seat. Listening as the Doctors footfalls grow hushed, then quiet. The noise of the door shutting in his wake echoes through the dead silence of the hotel room. All he could hear now, was the spit and crackle of the fire, the the noises of gaiety outside on the pavements, feet clacking, carriage wheels and hooves rattling, drifting up to the window.

He looks down over her. Watching her chest rise and fall. He toys with a lock of curled red hair. Winding it round his finger. Looking with anger on the bruise that had been bashed on her temple. Now turning a violent purple. A crescent shaped dent in the centre a stark shade of vermillion where it had broken the skin. He could see where Erik had applied salve to the wound. He pulled the covers up to her chest, making sure she kept warm. His cool, swelling fingers reached around the back of her neck, cupping her slender nape, feeling her temperature that was just above normal. Her hot skin branded his icy fingers.

In the silence, his tiredness suddenly creeps in. Now he can feel the grating bones of his hands, swelling painfully. The strain of his hunched shoulders, aching cheeks from blows in the fight. And the wound on his torso was starting to sting. His eyes feel incredibly heavy, and he is fighting just to keep them focused and alert.

He stifles a yawn. And after reaching for the heavy eiderdown pushed to the foot of the bed, he ensures she is covered, content, and happy. Before pouring himself a small, stiff drink from the crystal cut decanter in the parlour area, crossing back to the bedchamber, he chucks the drink back. Crosses to the short settee, and reclines his legs on it. Stretching out. His long limbs uncurling out, finally able to relax. The door he'd bolted. The windows were all locked. For tonight, they were safe.

He watched her, feeling the firelight taint the side of his face. Warming him. His eyes go fuzzy, the rooms blurs. And he falls asleep by the time the whiskey hits his stomach.

 

~

 

It's the coolness that wakes her, she shuffled, moving her head. Her eyes stir. And when she peeks them open, she feels that it actually wasn't her moving her head, but a calloused palm pressing down a cool, wet cloth to her head is what rouses her in the end.

 _"Thomas?"_ She asks, letting her eyes adjust to the cold blue light of the ceiling up ahead. She didn't recognise the room before her. The unfamiliar bed, window and decor. She whimpers his name.

When her hooded eyes slither open, she squints, before the blurry focus of him comes into view. Those piercing eyes the same shade as the midnight blue room about them, that dark hair swinging in his face. He soothes her, smiling down at her, stroking her soft, cold forehead.

" _I'm here_. Vianne. _My love_. I'm _here..."_ He tells her.

"Have they _gone?"_ She rasps. His heart breaks for her. He nods. Saddened. Angered that they were still scaring her. 

" _They've gone._ They _won't_ come back. They won't get to you, or us, anymore. _I promise."_ He assures her.

She shifts over in bed, trying sitting up, hissing at the splintering pain shooting through her eye sockets. She feels him startle as she moves so vigorously. He places a hand over her good one.

"Easy. Slowly, darling..." He tells her. "You've been through a lot tonight." He adds. She was caring, but she was headstrong.

"Where are we?" She asks, hoarsely. Frowning bewilderedly at the unfamiliar place. He scatters from his chair. Making a beeline for the side table. He pours her a cup of slightly cooled tea, stirs in milk. And walked it back over to her. He held it close, helping her with her good hand to drink it. She'd been asleep for hours, she was bound to feel parched.

"The Ritz. My suite. I didn't want to take you back home. Just in case it wasn't safe. They knew where you worked. I didn't wish to take the risk." He explains.

She nods, sipping the tea. The wet heat of it was bliss. It may have been the worlds best cup of tea. It certainly tasted like it. It stung her teeth, and branded her throat. But it was heaven to the sticky, dry chasm of her parched lips. She moans gratefully. Draining the cup dry in one quick gulp.

He smiles at her ravenous appetite. Glad to see she was getting better already. It had scared him earlier. Her writhing and twisting in agony and in a drugged haze.

"Harriden said you should _drink as much as possible_. And, get to your feet again slowly. When you want too. Not to overwhelm you with strain." He tells. After getting her another cup of tea, handing it to her good hand. She took it gratefully.

"You must be getting tired of _saving my skin._ " She tells him. Her eyes having swept over the swelling in his hands. The new bruises by his eye, and on his knuckles.

He smiles. Patting her knee softly under the covers.

"The lovely skin is _more than_ worth _saving._ " He awards her. She is sure she blushes. Then she asks the question that had been echoing in her head all night. Rattling back and forth like ball bearings in a tin can.

"How did you know where to find me? How did you... Get there before they managed to do something _worse than this...?"_ She asks. Lifting her poorly arm to show him what she meant.

His face fell. And she watches his jaw grit together. He averts his eyes. Wets his lips. And then he meets her eyeline once again. Looking apprehensive.

 _"You're not_ going to like it..." He tells her in a quiet hush.

"Thomas, who was it? _Who told you?"_ She asks keenly. Needing to know.

He didn't want to tell her. But he had too. He owes her that much. However strange and frightening her evening had been. It was all the more terrifying hearing the following name sail out of his lovely lips.

 _"Rosamund Price."_ He says stiffly.

 

 

~

 

 


	16. Miss Prices Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~ Earlier that very same evening...

 

 

 

 

****

 

 

 

Thomas was sat alone, in his office, on the factory floor. He had been idly scratching figures onto parchment with his ink-pen, but then inconsequential thoughts preyed heavily on him, and his mind wandered away from its task as he sat. Sleeves rolled up, waistcoat still buttoned, but he had loosened his accost tie. The midnight blue, washed walls made the space surrounding him seem desolate and dark. The little heaps of his experiments, born from his brilliant, mechanical mind, scattered on every shelf, and on the flat surface of his desk, in the dark night, looked far more peculiar in the dark, like jagged little, malformed, dark skeletal creatures, when in the days light, they gleamed and shone prettily. It was phenomenal how the dark tide of night could affect such a once, merry space. Then again, he was more used to being trapped in a sinister, disconcerting place. He’d been bound to Allerdale by love, and held prisoner by the darkest, most atrocious family secrets for what felt like half his life. His new freedom was still so phenomenal to him, he still couldn’t quite fathom it. But he couldn’t help thoughts of his past creep darkly into his head when he was alone. Nights was when he thought of Lucille the most. More specifically, of the expression on her face, right before she fell. It was rage, hatred and terror. And what’s more, he felt all the more rotten when he thought of how little he missed her. There was an ill darkness to her, that thrived when he hadn’t been paying attention. It had seized her and destroyed all specs of the woman he used to love.

He seemed to snap back into reality, seeing that his hand had paused over the paper, the sharp nib had torn through, and ripped a clean hole in his page. The ink pooled like dark, sticky blood on the page. He threw his pen down, huffed mildly in annoyance, and tore away the page, crumpling it in a tight fist, before throwing it away. He sighed, rubbing a hand over his tired, strained eyes. Looking out of the murky wall of windows next to his desk, he took a second to survey the darkened factory floor, he was so unused to seeing it so quiet, and without life. As if the machines, after the roaring, hissing and spitting of the busy day, had taken its toll, leaving them to slumber peacefully now. But still the cloying scent of metallic oil, and the musty scent of dust hung in the air, presiding over the room. He felt melancholic, but when he remarked on all he had done, all he had succeeded in building, his own company, from scratch. Fuelled by his ideas, and inventions, seeing how they helped to change, and better people’s lives, made him uncommonly proud. And he had no care that this was perhaps considered a vain feeling. He was full of pride for all he had accomplished in fabricating such a successful firm in only two years. He had enough money to live a more than comfortable life, ten times over. He could buy a townhouse, a country manor, the finest clothes, dine at the most expensive London restaurant every night. Just because he could. But those shallow, empty materialistic things didn’t mean a thing to him, unless he had _someone_ to share it all with.

Memories of Vianne, _especially_ ones from the previous few days, brought a fond smile back to his lips.

She was working tonight, also. Helping Harriden organise his lecture notes, as he was soon to publish a paper in a famed German medical journal. She was so excited to be helping with such a worthy cause. They had dined at hers, and she had kissed him, hard, passionately before sidling away to catch a cab to the London for the lecture. He had smiled watching her leave, he had intended a night of solitude, and catching up with a title he had been keen to read. But an urgent delivery at the last minute called him back to Richmond. So it seemed the tax of work was upon his tonight too. Going back to Vianne’s right away, seemed superfluous, when he had no task with which to attend, as it was, he could occupy himself more usefuly attending his neglected wage ledgers, and checking stock. There was always something for him to be getting on with.

As the factory life died down, and night drew in, Thomas sat and watched, as even the most diligent, loyal workers, packed it in, and sidled off home. Heading back to the wife, kids, and a table laden with a dinner, the loving wife, and merry children eagerly awaiting home, the man of the house. Thomas envied them such a happy life, going to a warm, inviting home, to a loving spouses side. Hopefully, maybe even one day soon, he could have that for himself and the woman he loved. He had sat, tonight, and watched the factory floor slowly dissolve into lifelessness. The lights, one by one, are extinguished, and dull darkness sets in. Until it was only him. Alone. Victim to his own thoughts.

He didn’t realise the aches of his body until he eased his spine back, properly leaning into the cradle of the wooden desk chair. His back flared painfully, and his thighs ached dully. He looked wearily across at the carriage clock on his mantel, directly opposite the room. Through blurry, sleepy eyes he can see that it reads near twenty to one in the morning. His eyes wander over the mountain of papers stacked on his in-tray that needed his attention come tomorrow morning, then across the polished surface past broken slide rules, his inkpot, and then over the two silver frames, He and Vianne, adorned in wedding attire, posing stiffly in the chapel in one, and a lone portrait of her, bedecking the other frame. And she was smiling that smile he adored seeing. He admires them for a lonely second. His fingers reaching out to trace the shattered crack in the glass. His fingertip skimming the dent. It splintered through the frame, fracturing it into shards. His wedding one was shrouded by splintered glass too. He had managed to salvage them from Allerdale before he left. They had been fractured by Lucille, after discovering Vianne had left them, in a fit of rage took out her anger on what was left of his ex-wife’s possessions. She had thrown these very two pictures down the stairs. Trying manically to scratch out any trace of her left. Especially hating any sort of insinuation he might have cared about, or loved another woman more than her. After she finished having her rageful tantrum that night, and he was certain she had stormed off to her quarters. Thomas had crouched on those stairs, on the bottom step, in the dark where they had landed, tears dripping down his face that he didn’t care to stem. As he clutched the two frames in his hands so tight, the glass cut into his hands.

 A sound far off in the warehouse snapped him sharply from his tragic reverie, he looked up, like a dark, dashing predator being startled by something unknown, entering into his territory. More importantly, that was, he recognised, the sound of women’s high heels clattering across the concrete floor. His heart is briefly lifted by the notion that it may have been Vianne coming to visit him on her way home, he moves to stand, but when he sees the tell-tale shape of a female figure silhouetted in the frosted glass door, he realises it isn’t. There comes a slow, playful knock at the door. He doesn’t answer, but the woman sashays through the door anyway.

“Are you able to spare a moment for a damsel _in need,_ Mr Sharpe?” Comes a flirtatious remark, as before him, now stands Rosamund Price. In all her fine, polished glory.

But, that’s what hits him first. Is that _she wasn’t._ There was dirt, soggy wet dirt, marring the hem of her pink and crimson pinstriped dress. Some of the trimmings, ruffles and flounces, were missing stitches, and hanging limply off her dress. It was ripped in places, namely at the join of her shoulder. Her hair was mussed from its coiffure, and straggled her honey blonde curls in disarray. The lash darkener cosmetics she wore was bleeding lightly down her cheeks. The white fur swathed about her shoulders looked a little stained, and matted. This didn’t appear, at first glance, to be the same, pristine, jovial heiress he had met not a week ago. What really got his attention, however, was the one black eye, and the bruise on her forehead.

“Miss Price..” He exclaimed slowly as he stood. His expression didn’t know where to rest. On the one hand he _is livid_ with her, for lying to, and upsetting his Vianne, masquerading as a friend when she was the very one her fiancé was cuckolding her for _. Yet,_ at the same time, she was in pain, suffering and shivering, and had obviously been assaulted. And regardless of their situation, no woman _ever_ deserved that. “What _on earth?”_ He asks her, seeing she had a slight tremor in her hand. He comes to a stand, and intends to round the desk. But she halts him, gesturing for him to stop with an open palm.

“Who _did this_ to you?” He asks her, looking pointedly at her injured, battered face.

She chuckled wryly. Her beautiful rosebud lips, which had once been used to the finest rouges, and the prettiest smile, now looked raw, and chapped. “Someone I thought _loved_ and _cared_ about me. Mr Sharpe.” She replies sadly. Tears glimmering in her eyes, sadness wobbling her voice which tried to steady itself being strong, and playful. His chest tightens with hearing her answer.

“St. Clair?” He asks her, lowly, and kindly. She didn’t meet his eyes, and her lips pursed, tightening her smile. She bit down on her lower lip.

“I thought you were _safe_ from him… Vianne told me you lived with your Father. _What-?”_ He asked confusedly.

“When my _dear papa_ discovered I had been carrying on with an engaged man, he was suddenly _far less_ inclined to let me my inheritance. He cut me off. This past week I’ve been staying at a boarding house in Cheapside, out of Henry’s charity… but, now even _that_ , appears to have run _dry.”_  She explained.

“ _Now please_. If we may divert the conversation to the purpose I intended, I came here to deliver you something, not to _garner pity.”_  She insists to him.

“Have a seat..” Thomas offers, signalling to the twin chairs the far side of his desk.

She flinches, even when he merely extended a hand in her direction. That made his heart sink, it really did. He may not have been her biggest, most adoring fan, but for a man to do such reckless, violent damage to a woman was unforgivable. Leaving marks on fair skin was out of order. And no question about it.

“ Thank-you. But, I’ll stand, I haven’t _got long.”_   She fretted, peering over her shoulder, out across the dead silent and dark factory floor. “I can’t be certain whether or not he had me followed.” She explains grimly.

Thomas says nothing. _He can’t_. He doesn’t know how to reply to that.

“Listen…” She tells him, wetting her lips. “He doesn’t know where I’ve gone. He gave me strict instructions to stay put, and not to leave. But I did. I got away, and… now I’m hiding in miserable, flea infested boarding houses, one after the other, day in day out, because I’m terrified of what will happen to me if he _finds me…”_ She stammered.

“What has that to do with you visiting me?” He asks her.

She looks at him them, with a look of pure terror in her eyes.

“He had Vianne followed aswell. Mr. Sharpe. And I overheard him telling some very unsavoury characters about how it stands between you and her. He told them your incredibly wealthy, and that you’re in love with her. I’ve never seen him so livid when you stole her away. He may look an ordinary, capable man. But he isn’t He is _dangerous_ , and he _is not_ to be gone against lightly. I learnt that myself, the _hard way_.” She explained. “I fell for the _very worst sort_ of man..” She whispered. Tears squeezed from her eyes, dribbling down her cheeks.

Thomas hates to admit that he himself has known worse. _Did Vianne ever address him in that way behind his back? If she had, he wouldn’t blame her._

“Though I can’t say I care for the fact both _he,_ and _you_ , betrayed Vianne, Miss Price, I would not wish such a thing _on any_ woman in the world. For a time, between me and Vianne, I was that worst sort of man.”

“You don’t _seem it_ to me. Not now. Not in the way you treat her… the way you look at her. I saw it for myself. That day in the tearoom at the Ritz. You couldn’t take your eyes off her. And is wasn’t possession. It was attraction, longing and _yearning.”_ She says weakly. Her voice sore from her choking tears. “Of course, when you first came back for her, you seemed quite the dark scoundrel. Henry insisted you were a ruinous wastrel, seducing her astray, But now I realise… pots and kettles…” She spoke with little humour.

“The important thing is, that you’ve gotten away from him, now.” Thomas tries to soothe her. She winces.

“But… for how long? _How long_ am I safe? How much longer can I go from boarding house to boarding house, running from him. Do you think he’ll keep away from Vianne? Because I tell you now, Sir. I know for a fact, _he will not_ let go of her.” She informs him. “Not just like that.” She shakes her head in warning.

 “So, do you think he’d try and get _her back,_ somehow?” He asked. Her face fell darkly.

“Worse.” She tells. “He’ll hurt her, and ransom you for money for her safety. _I heard him_ plan it.” She explains. By this point he was certain his stomach was at his feet, and his blood was bubbling with frothing, white hot, rage. Pierced with fear, he is only capable of spitting out one, singular word.

 He demands stiffly. His temper fraying at the very edges. “How do I know this isn’t _a trick?”_ He asks stiffly.

“I’m not in a position to be granting him any favours. Mr Sharpe.” She tells sourly.

 _“When_ will he try and come for her?” He asks quickly.

“ _Tonight.”_ She tells him. No sooner were the words out of her mouth, and he’d slammed his chair back, stalked across to his coat on the rack, and harshly, quickly, tugged it on his arms.

“There’s _more._ Mr Sharpe. But I….. daren’t say _it here_. I haven’t _the time._ But you, and Vianne, need to _know it_.” She hurriedly presses. Her blue dolls eyes darting from him, to the doors, and back again.

“Where can _we find_ you?” He asks quickly.

She looks nervously out of the open factory doors, once more, looking for the evidence of Henry’s sending people to check up on her. Report on her every move.

“I _can’t_ say. I think, in the meantime. It would be easier for _me,_ to find _you…_ _Oh, But_..” She suddenly remembers, scrabbling for her straggled, torn, dirty velvet reticule that dangled limply off one arm. Thomas noted with distress, _how light_ it was. And what was the most tragic, was that _was everything_ in the world this poor woman owned. Love was a beastly thing to her. It had cost her the roof over her head, and the very riches she relied on. Love really did make monsters of men.

He watched her unpolished, grubby hands, and bitten nails, reach for something in its depths. And when she drew it out, she pressed a straggly piece of paper. On it was scribbled the name of grotty, public house, somewhere in the east end slums. Up Stepney way, across the river. He tucked the paper into his pocket. But now before he withdrew a wad of paper notes from his wallet. Stuffing the large sum of money down in her reticule. She looked up at him, doe eyed, unbelieving what he had given her. It looked to be near the sum of almost _twenty pounds._ She looked thankful _beyond measure._

“Sir, you are too kind, _but_. I _couldn’t_.” She tries to protest, pressing it back in his hands. But he wouldn’t have it.

“Forgive me for saying, but, you don’t look to me like you’ve had a _hot meal_ recently.” He says lowly. “That should prove _more than ample_ for decent lodgings, a room with _a lock_ on the door, and a shilling or two for the metre. Stiff drink and a hot bath work wonders on a soul in need of soothing.” Thomas tells her.

She smiles. Gratefully. Close to tears once more at his kindness.

“Go _to her_.” She urges. “Keep her _safe,_ Mr Sharpe.” She says lowly. Clutching at her reticule with newfound relish.

She watched him rush, urgently to extinguish the oil lamp on his desk, throwing them into half-darkness. Now only lit by the street lights outside the factory. His long coat flapped as he moved erratically. He may have looked like  a dark, story tale villain. The scarred man. But Rosamund had learned that there was more to him than she first thought. He was no mere dame-tamer out to find a girl to warm his bed. He was a devoted, loyal, man. And it was clear he held a deep affection for Vianne. She’d never admitted to being envious of _anyone_ in her life. She was usually the one with the lifestyle, fashion and manner that women were jealous of, but she’d happily admit, she was envious of Vianne for having such a man as he.

“You keep _safe too._ Miss Price. Get as far away from St. Clair’s clutches as you can manage.” He recommends.

She smiles, sadly observing him dart to the door, sail through it, and he was off. His long legs carrying him far and fast, away to protect his lady love.

She watched him go. Not looking away until he disappeared, off, out of sight. Swallowed up into the night. She sighed, unable to believe she had gone against the man she thought she loved. And whom she thought loved her in return. But, she was merely a distraction. That thought needles in her chest, like knives sinking and stabbing into her heart. Glumly, she too scurries away. The shadows, darker than ever, followed her each move, every step of the way back to the miserable boarding house.

 

~

 

“That was all she said to you?” Vianne asked, reassessing his tale.

They were sat in his suites sitting room. Having just dined on the dining table in the through room. The candles danced, shadows flickered up the walls, and not two nights after the incident, Thomas was regaling Vianne with the tale of how Rosamund Price had come to him, destitute, and beaten, to warn him about the ill wishes of St. Clair trying to extort money from him, as her safety was threatened. They now sat, curled close on the same golden, gilded settee. He had procured her some clothes, as he hadn’t wanted to let her go home and fetch her own. She now sat in a ivory silk nightgown, and dressing gown. Still dressed down, as technically, Thomas still treated her as a patient to be taken care of. She can’t say she minded. They had been dining on some of the finest food in one of London’s best hotels. She had undressed her wound and sunk into the world’s most delicious bath, earlier that evening. And it wasn’t hard to see that He had to restrain himself when she surfaced, _perfectly naked_ under her dressing gown. They got to behave, and do all the intimate things that _they’d missed_. Reading books, together, in the same room. Taking tea, and sleeping in the same bed, at night, it was new, yet, somehow it was also _a familiar_ routine.

Thomas was sat with his arms folded in his lap, turning sideward to face her, as he told her the story. His dress too was relaxed. He only had on breeches, his braces were down by his hips, he didn’t have boots on his feet. And his cotton shirt was rumpled where they had relaxed their dress at dinner. Her hair was loose, and free. He adored the way the copper of it was a tumbled, coiled mess, that spilled down her shoulders when it was freed. Her arm was healing well, and he wouldn’t let her slip from a strict pain-relief schedule, for her own well-being, and partly for his own peace of mind. He couldn’t rest knowing she was in pain. He helped her dress it, apply the salve three times daily. And re-wrap her poor arm. He had to restrain his anger whenever he looked down at that gaping wound. Knowing that the foul beast who instigated it was still standing, walking, and _breathing_ on this earth.

“ _All she said_. My heart went out to her, she looked… _forgive me_ , but she looked _terrible._ I cannot believe what loving Henry _has done_ to her. _”_ Thomas explained to her. He was worried he would frighten her with what he said. But she surprised him. She took it fully in her stride. She blinked on hearing the words cross his lips. But then she nodded, and told him bravely to continue. She amazed him, She always amazed him in her regard to be astoundingly robust, no matter the situation.

“And the address she gave you is where she’s staying? The rose and crown public house?” She enquired.

“She said it hurriedly. But _that’s what_ she insisted,” He explained. “And she also said she’d _try_ and send a note when she was able. I told her where we’d be.” He adds.

She looked dejectedly into the fireplace flames. Watching them crackle, spit and blaze in the hearth.

“I cannot pretend that she was my _… most trusted_ , beloved friend. But, _poor Rose_. I wouldn’t wish destitution for a single woman, on my _worst_ enemy.” She sighs glumly.

Thomas looked at her, empathising, reaching out to squeeze her good hand. Clutching it lovingly. His thumb smoothing little circles on the back of her hand is the most intimate, warming, pleasant sensation. She curls up deeper into the cradle of the sofa. Resting her head on the back. Letting her eyes relax, wandering over her handsome beau. Meeting his piercing eyes, roaming over his beautiful features, that raw scar that he hated, and she adored. She liked stroking a fingertip down over the jagged track of it when they were abed. Led facing one another. He always looked at her in the same way when she did. In disbelief. Like he couldn’t possibly believe she can love such an ugly, horrific thing.

A rapt, polite knock on the door startles them both. Chipping in on their intimacy, like a pecking bird. Thomas stiffens, before he steels himself up, tall, standing, and then heads for the door. She watches him go, her eyes drifting down over his, tall, muscular back. Past his firm rear, and the strong, twin muscled columns of his thighs. Strong, as he strode to the door, down the hallway. She listens, hearing the muffled, male tones of a terse conversation. And then the door shuts, and she relaxes. Letting out a sigh, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, Thomas was before her pulling a piece of parchment out of an envelope.

“It appears she _found us,_ after all..” He spoke after he read it. His eyes flickered up to meet hers, and she slides forwards  to take it from his offered grasp.

“Blind Beggars Public House. Limehouse. Meet me, at 2am, sharp, tomorrow night. By the old lamppost on the corner of Dock Street.” She reads aloud. Reading the rushed scrawl on the paper.

She looks up at Thomas, who was looking down at her, with a fierce look of warning simmering in those blue eyes.

 _“No.”_ He finalises.

She tilts her head stubbornly. _He then remembered that his ex-wife was, true to form, the worlds most obstinate redhead._

 _“No._ Vianne. It’s _too dangerous_ …” He insists firmly. His voice turning into the most vicious, protective tone.

“Then you can come with me, if only for your peace of mind, Thomas Sharpe. Because _I_ am _going_.” She presses. Folding the letter up. Daring him to challenge her.

She was going. Come hell or high water. She was getting to the bottom of this sordid situation, once and for all. Thomas Sharpes interjections _be damned_.

 

~

 

 


	17. Led Astray

 

~

 

“I _don’t like_ this, Vianne.” Thomas growled lowly “ _I don’t_ like this, _one bit.”_ He said, as he’d leant forwards to perch far forwards on the coach bench. Peering out of the cold, glass window, at the dark, smog filled street before them.

They were both currently waiting in the hackney coach Thomas had hired to take them to their rendezvous with Miss Price. They had halted the coach, sitting on the cobbled curb, a street away from the Blind Beggar Public house, which, judging by the light, and noise of intoxication coming from within, able to be heard from down the road, the landlord didn’t care much for calling last orders at a _reasonable_ hour. Every now and then, they’d hear roaring laughter, and somewhere out in the street, a shrieking child crying in the tenement buildings, or the evident scuttle of a stray dog shifting through the bins. Women who could only be described as ones who, _solicited,_ strolling quickly down the pavements, finding company with a wandering docker. Flitting in and out of alleyways, making the place seem not _quite so_ desolate. Every now and then their cackle’s of flirty laughter would ripple through the air. It was a far cry from Rose’s previous address, a polished, immaculate Kensington townhouse in the centre of fashionable London. Vianne wagered that the poor girl would never have thought she’d see herself this far north of the river in her spoilt lifetime.

She had dressed tonight, in her darkest coloured dress, procured recently from Thomas as a gift. A dark, garnet coloured velvet gown, the softest velvet she’d ever felt. With a black bowler hat perched on her hair, and a midnight black pelisse over her skirts, and dark boots. His choice of clothing was similarly dark. As it always was. Coal black boots, breeches, a scarlet cravat, white cotton shirt and a long, excellently cut, onyx over-coat. Vianne watched out of the window too, sat wringing circles in her velveteen skirts with her tight grip, he could hear the leather of her new gloves, squeak as she did. He hadn’t wanted to let her go back home, just as a precaution. He was more than happy to buy her what she needed. He gave her measurements, and sizes discreetly to the concierge at the Ritz, who scurried along to Selfridges, and spared no expense, as her his instructions. There was no little thing Thomas wouldn’t do to see her comfortable.

Though she absolutely wouldn’t let on. She was as nervous as he was. But she was trying resolutely, not to let it show. She could see the lamppost, down the street, the murky, yellow light of it blurred in the fog. But she didn’t see a sign of any figure stood, awaiting her. She swallows down the thick fear that clogged her throat. Ignoring the queasiness in her stomach that had been bugging her. Thomas, sat opposite, pulled out his pocket watch, and checked the time. He was braced far forwards, his elbows on his knees. Those lengthy legs of his forming a wide, V, shape as he sat. As the space in the coach was scant, her knees, as she sat, brushed into his. The space they shared was cosy, there was no denying. She tore her gaze from the barren, foggy street, and turned to look at him as he read the time.

“It’s five to two… She _should be here_ by now.” He spoke glumly. His eyes serious, and his mouth an unamused line. He still thought this was a _tremendously bad_ idea.

“We’ll give her _a little more_ time…” She explains. Her eyes switching to watch the dark street again. He looked across at her, watching her pale face, and those cobalt eyes shone bright under the shadowed brim of her hat. Peering out the corner of her eyes at the bleak alley of a street. Curious, and patient. Though she faced him, he could tell the street beyond had captured and kept her attention.

“It may just be my cautious gut instinct. But…something doesn’t… _feel,_ right.” He speaks lowly, he too, now looking at the street.

“Why would she tell us to come if she isn’t going to _show?”_ Vianne turned, and asked him,

“Exactly _my point_. Why _indeed?”_   He growled softly, in suspicion.

She averted her eyes, to the coach floor, before she looked up and met his. As piercing they usually were, the brightest things in the half-light of their carriage.

“We _have_ to find out, what is going on, Thomas. If not for our sake, then atleast for hers. You told me he had beaten her. And in the past, you know he’s had his hands on me with violent intent. And if I can meet her tonight, and hear what she has to say about him. _Then maybe_ we can go to the police with such information. He is an awful man, who has done even more awful things, and If I can stop him doing committing more atrocities. Then, you should be _by my side_ on that, as the _man I dearly love_ , not fretting so about my safety to the point where you wish to stop me trying to do _a good, righteous_ thing.” She explains modestly.

His face falls a little, and sheepishly he reaches across her for gloved hand. Raising it, to his lips, and kissing the back of her hand. He nods understanding now, he had been, a _little too harsh,_ with his disputes as to why she had to meet Rose here. He thought about those jagged scars on her shoulder. The way Dr. Harriden had been close to tears of anger in describing so graphically, Henry’s mistreatment of her. He thought about all that, all she had survived through, and he felt rotten for worrying so ardently for her safety.

“I just _don’t.._ want you hurt… again.” He explains softly, sadly. His strong voice crackled, buckling at the words.

“I’m not keen on being hurt once more, _either._ That last time was _plenty enough_ of a terrifying encounter for me. But, my darling. We are both _here, together,_ and I feel safe… so long as, _you_ , are  the one standing beside me.” She tells.

He nods, sliding forwards, silently, his hand cups the back of her neck, and he kisses the peachy silk of her cheek. The one move, letting her know he was sorry, and he understood. And there was no more that he needed to say. His eyes met hers, then slipped back to the foggy street,

“Vianne..” He spoke lowly. His eyes having gone to the window. His voice was grave. And his eyes were fixated on the lamppost. Her head whipped around to look at what he pointed out. And there, in the foggy darkness, _only just_. illuminated by the gaslight, stood a slight figure. Vianne couldn’t make out her face from such a distance, but her head was covered with a derby hat. But to Vianne’s eye, that slender figure she recognised could only have been that of her friend.

Her hand went to the door, and she pushed it open, sliding one foot down to brace on the footrest, as her body followed after. The balls of her feet hit the cobbled pavement hard, and she felt the cool chill of the foggy night envelope around her body. Creeping down her collar, and up her sleeves. She tugs her coat tighter, and feels Thomas move behind her, she felt trepidation, heading off into the veritable rabbit warren of side streets, alleys and dark passageways which ran deep into the heart of the tenements, and the close-knit houses. Unknown to them. This was, every inch, dark, formidable, and unfamiliar territory they were venturing into. She felt a stranger in a strange place. But when she felt her Thomas come to his full height behind her, she felt a little more reassured in heading into the dark unknown. Their hands sought for one another’s, and clutched tight when they found it.

They set off, walking across the uneven cobbles, eyes sharp, looking out cautiously for any signs of danger. Vianne strode off, quicker than Thomas did. Whilst his piercing eyes scanned around them, On closer inspection he noticed that the slumping dark shapes littering the alley floor, are not, in fact shadows, but homeless vagabonds, bedding down amongst the bins. Shrouding themselves in newspaper, attempting to keep warm in the bitter night. Whereas she headed straight for the beacons of the lampposts light. Seeing the coated figure beyond, moving, not closer, but further away. Vianne listened hard, positive that the footsteps, the swaying hips, and the gait of the walk was decidedly feminine. She was listening for the clack of heels, and the rustle of dress fabric. But they are walking too fast, and too far away.

Before she can get any further, the crook of her arm is gently grabbed by Thomas, Who pulls her to an unsteady stop. He too seeing the slight figure, turn a corner and head down an unknown alley. She looks back to him. She can see his is absolutely itching to protest again, but he couldn’t find the words, his eyes narrowing into the dark alley ahead. All the darker by the fact that they were now close to the lamppost, and all beyond it seemed horrifyingly dark, compared to the blinding brilliance of the light it threw out, spilling dizzying pools of honey gold onto the grubby, cobbled, pavement. And over them, as they stood, and the figure scrambled away.

“It _might be_ Rose.” Vianne states.

“Then why, _heaven forfend_ , is she trying to lead you upon a merry _chase?”_ He asks seriously.

Because when he looked around, they could both see the figure had halted, and was awaiting them, down the alley. Vianne turns back to him, and he watches as she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small, compactable flick knife. It was pure silver, with a ornate handle. Judging by the pristine flat of the blade, it had never been used. His eyes rested on the knife, until he met her eye-line again. She sends him a _‘look’_ that informs him they were protected.

“You’re _sure?”_  He asks, yet again.

“Never been _more so.”_ She swallows.

He can sense it, her nervousness was _palpable._ As was his doubt. He swallows, and lets her go in the lead. A clanking in the street opposite makes him turn, and glance around as Vianne heads down the alleyway first. It was the sound of a glass bottle crashing, or rolling in the street just over from them. As if someone had scuffled it with their shoe. He looks, searches, seeking for the shape of someone. But he can find none. It reminds him all the more that he was an outsider to this dank, rotten, place. That sets him on edge more than anything else. When he turns back, Vianne was a good many yards away. He strides quickly to catch up.

The figure in front was moving as silently, and as quickly as a shadow. They seemed to navigate the narrow passageways, with relative ease, moving confidently, striding with purpose. Their behaviour reflected in such a way that it let Vianne, and Thomas know, they boasted of some local, native knowledge of this place. They certainly moved like they knew the area. Down the alley, they moved under a bridged house passageway, through the brick arch, and along such a narrow alley, Vianne feels her coat shoulders, each side, brush against the dampened brick. Past that, they take a sharp right, delving deeper into the labyrinthian space.

They moved along, past squalid houses, which looked no bigger than a lavatory cubicle. They dodged under strung up washing lines, pegged with dirty, grey laundry, which had been white in a previous life. Their shoes narrowly avoid discarded muck, and food debris, smashed bottles and various other muck that seemed to congeal on every nook of the public pavement. Past dirty, boarded windows to retain what little privacy the inhabitants had, and swerving round bins, they heard the scuttling scratch of rats running, fleeing in the dark. And the sound of far off arguments, raised voices, and shrieking infants from within the ugly walls of the squat building, The air ripe with decay, the stench of numerous stale bodies, and other human matter and substances _too foul_ to name. Vianne felt sorrow, her brow pulled too with empathy, at seeing just what a plague poverty, and confined space could be on the human spirit. As a nurse, she _knew_ that such conditions were an ideal environment – matter of fact more likely to be _the source_ \- of the melting pot of all such diseases she spent her life trying to treat, prevent, and cure. But she sees now, these conditions, not fit for animals let alone families, and people, were what should be, and needed to be fought against.

But what good would she serve, fighting infection and ailments when she couldn’t even fight to prevent the very surroundings that caused them? It was like bolting the stable door after the horse had bolted. It would _never, truly_ , solve anything.

It made her feel inconsequential. All those hours she spent over a cauldron of soup, with a ladle, helping feed the cold, the tired, and the homeless. Those times she slaved rolling bandages, and helping people with no mind for medical care, to dress their wounds, and introduce them to personal hygiene, preventing them from falling ill again. She gave generously to charity, after all, she was an heiress, she could afford it. And she felt stupid, in seeing this place. Because she realised then, that what she did, hadn’t evoked a singular _scrap_ of difference, or change. That hits her worst of all.

After they finish walking along, past the tiny, squalid grey houses, and Vianne’s mind stopped whirring with thought, they come to a left turn, which they take, she had to trot quickly, holding her skirts aloft, merely to keep up, again, the alley is narrow, and the dour air reeked of uncouth odours, regurgitation, and spilled ale. Thomas crunches the broken glass of a bottle under the tread of his boots, seeing Vianne turned back, flinching at the sound. He mouths an apology, holding out his hands, for the noise had made him _baulk slightly_ too. Past that alley, they come to a hexagon shaped clearing, rickety, shambling houses, and a deserted shopfront, its windows caked in yellowing newspaper, peeling from the murky glass, dead insects littered like macabre confetti across the dusty shelf, lined the cobweb strewn, shopfront window. The craggy building’s here, loomed over them as they stood in the dark space. A broken lamppost high above, casts next to no light. And Vianne can see at least five alleyways, leading away from their current spot, like they were at the centre of a wheel spoke, or a spiders web.

What worried her most, though, was that the figure had now vanished. In her looking up at their surroundings, their leader had flitted off, away into the night. She listened, but couldn’t hear a sound. Her stomach rolled up in cold, clammy dread. Her eyes darted everywhere, waiting to chase after a movement, but _no such thing_ came. Thomas stopped behind her, keeping close.

“ _Hello?”_ Vianne calls, whispering harshly, into the darkness. Hearing her exclaim slither back at her, from the damp brick walls that went on for yards, in every direction. Far as the eye could see. She swallows, her mouth feeling sticky, and dry. She walks to the closest passage, and peers down, hoping to see the silhouette of them, leaning casually against the wall, waiting for them. But, nothing. Just an empty, fog filled pathway.

She walks back to the centre, facing Thomas. Her thoughts racing at a million miles. Why were they lead here? Away from the street? She feels for the hard shape of the knife in her dress pocket.

“Did you see _where_ she went?” Vianne asks him quickly.

“She may aswell have vanished _into thin air.”_ He answered austerely. His eyes too, darted about, looking for their guide. Vianne sighed, with a mixture of both dread, and annoyance.

“She must have gone _somewhere..”_ She laments. Her voice was soft, and even, though it was edged with irritation. “Human beings don’t just _vanish_ into the night like _a puff of smoke..”_ She adds, clacking over to the nearest alleyway, placing her gloved hand on the damp brick as she leant down, peering through the archway into the narrow path beyond it. She is treated to the same, unoccupied, brick-walled, lane as the last passage she peeked down.

“But they _can_ give off that effect if they know the area.. which she _obviously did_. Something doesn’t _feel right…_ to me, Vianne.” Thomas speaks lowly behind her, he hadn’t moved, to seek and find their anonymous escort, as she had done. He was perfectly still, but his eyes, scanned about restlessly, every dark nook, and every shadowed crevice. All was untouched, uncovered, and turned over to those Sharpe, piercing eyes. “You were ahead of me, did you see _, anything_ , about her that could have signified _it was_ Rose?” He questioned.

“I saw her hair, at the back of her neck, under her hat. It was a _light_ , medallion blonde. _Just alike_ that of Roses.” She tells truthfully. Because she had.

She had seen the straggled, wisps of light coils of long hair folded back from the coat collar. And when she stepped over an obstacle, she saw the expensive ivory, button boots, and the flash of cherry red skirts peek out from under her coat when she lifted her skirts. Vianne had eyes like a hawk. She was an alert, observant person. A habit gained from her medical profession, she could give someone a silent assess with a sweeping glance of her eyes, and if there were tell-tale signs for diagnosis for disease, then _she’d find it._

She took her chances. Heading to the next archway, sandwiched between the low, shambling building, and the tenement next to it, she passes under the arch, leaving Thomas behind in the clearing, as she strode forwards, the alley twisted, and turned sharply. It was easy to see how someone could evade them in such a constricted net of passageways, and paths. Thomas watches the silhouette of her get swallowed up into the smog. Growing faint, and then he could barely make her out. He stays put, as behind him, again, he hears the clanking sound of debris being kicked underfoot. Scuttling along the rotten floor. Of course, there’s every possibility that its some wandering drunk, heading home, booting discarded bottles along the cobbles in his stupor. Or rats, skidding about in the decaying waste. Scratching to find, and fight over scraps of unwanted food. Bur in the mood he’s in, and considering where they had been tricked into going, his mind doesn’t dismiss it as something inconsequential.

“Any _thing?”_ He called softly through the smog, his shoes crackling in the dirt, underfoot as he stood.

Ahead of him, in the alley, Vianne let her eyes glance in every direction ahead of her. But she didn’t think to look behind, past the walled arch she had stepped through.

“Me’ rates are ‘alf a crown. Princess _… Dependin’_ on what service it is you’d be requirin’ _that is_ …” Came a teasing, adenoidal, cockney drawl from behind her.

She whips round, hearing the harsh, bristling scratch of something scrape down the wall. When a sudden flare of amber shoots into the air, Vianne recoils, seeing a matchstick, held in a grubby, fingerless gloved, feminine hand. Or atleast, they would be if her stubby nails were cleaned to rid the ring of black that sat around her fingernails. In bringing the match up to her mouth.

Vianne focuses first on the bent, stubby woodbine, jammed between plump lips so pink and raw, they looked like _a wound_. Air sucking in, makes the tip glow red. She realises the uncommon cherry red of the mouth, was rouge, painted on. Smeared down her chin, and over her cheeks. She then focuses on the face, a stumpy nose, and heavily rouged cheeks, leave her unable to see if she is pale, or not. The stark cosmetics standing out like a beacon, to mask the face beyond. Her eyes, dark, deep and uncaring, though in the night, they glinted with satisfactory promiscuity, are rimmed by black, staining, lash darkener. Her hair was knotted, and unkept. The hat pulled on her head, is scuffed, filthy, and most likely, _someone else’s,_ judging by how it fit so deficiently. Her clothes were tattered, garish, and uncommonly revealing, a blue corset that was ripped, and stained, and skirts that had seen better years  _in last century_. The cherry red skirts were cut to an incredibly deplorable length, halfway up her calves, showing off bright red stockings, which were laddered and ripped. Her heeled kid boots, have most of the _toe_ missing from the right foot.

When she finishes taking a deep drag, and reaches up and sweeps the cigarette away from her lips, and the smoke puffs out from between a sly sneer, and two rows of jagged, yellowed teeth. The smile disconcerts her down to her bones, because it looked _so innocent_ , and childlike, even though she was obviously hailing from a very, _adult,_ practice of profession.

Her face must have conveyed a great deal of shock, and surprise. Though she hadn’t meant too. Because the woman cackled, her crowing laugh like grating chalk against a blackboard.

 _“Ya’_ don’t need to look so _bowled over … darlin._ ’ You’d _be surprised_ how many women I’ve had come to me… paying me, for _me’ services…_ _I won’t tell a soul. I’m the best thing you can get round here for half a crown.”_  She lusts, winking. Where she was leaning confidently against the wall, she shifts her body, angling it flirtatiously towards her after she spoke. The cigarette now perched between two fingers, the smoke trickling up into the smog above them. When she adjusted, the way her body twisted, allows Vianne to see the grubby, dirt streaked, globes of her large, pale breasts, pushed high by her corset.

Vianne’s mouth gapes open more, she doesn’t know what to even _think_ in response to that. Luckily, Thomas’s figure comes closer, and faintly, through the smog, he emerges to come instantly to her side, to protect her from any trouble. Having, no doubt, heard her companions… _startling,_ remarks.

This makes the woman raise a cheeky brow. Biting her lip as she assessed Thomas’s striking, handsomeness. Even in the fog, his eyes were still piercing, and that scar always tended to intrigue the opposite sex most keenly. He looked dangerous, and women wanted to try and be the ones, yearning, secretly or not, to tame _such wildness_.

“It’s a _guinea_ if your friend wants to join in…” She dallies, chatting Vianne up still. Looking Thomas up and down, from head, to toe. “I wouldn’t mind _sharing ‘im.”_ She adds cheekily. Reclining back on the wall, shifting her skirts up a little higher, trying to entice him further.

“A _polite pass_. Thankyou…” He growls wryly. His arm anchoring to the crook of Vianne’s elbow. Gently pulling her to his side, as he gave the playful girl a glare that could turn anyone to stone, should he want it too. His jaw stiff, his rigid anger starting to permeate his senses. Vianne wants to say that he wasn’t one for going halves… but he beats her to the punch.

 _“I don’t_ do _sharing.”_  He warns lethally. Showing the girl who his Vianne belonged too.

“You’re the one who _led us here?”_ Vianne asks in a low voice, before Thomas’s possessiveness got the better of him.

She snorts. “D’ya see any other blondes _wanderin’_ round here? _Darlin’?_ …” She asks amusedly. Thomas stops being angry, and looks at Vianne. Now he just looked perturbed. As she was sure was a credible, true, reflection of her own current expression.

“Did someone, _put you up_ to leading us out here?” Thomas questioned her, sharply. Stepping closer, looking down at her in a serious, harsh, manner.

 _“Maybe_.” She smiled back. Her smile was as brazen as the glint of mischief in her eyes. That displeased Thomas. He summoned his harshest, most assertive tone. Somehow, this seemed to make him taller, and angrier to the person who’d displeased him.

“We don’t _have time_ for stupid, toying games. Tell us, _who_ put you up to it. _Why_ did you lead us here?” Thomas demands strictly.

“Was it _a Doctor_ who paid you?” Vianne adds. This caused the girl to sneer, shaking her head.

“ _Na’_. It weren’t no doctor. But, e’ was posh _. Like_ , one of you. He said I’s just to walk and lead you way out ‘ere…Cause I was _blonde,_ and _thin_ , he said that’s why _he paid_ me…” She explained crassly. Flicking ash off the end of her cigarette as nonchalantly as if they weren’t in their current predicament.

Vianne went white, a sigh of fear shook her lips, and she grabbed Thomas’s arm.

“You were right, this _was_ a trap. Only it _wasn’t a_ trap for _, us.”_  She tells him shrilly, her face blanched with fear. He too now wears the same sombre, fearful realisation.

 _“Rose.”_ He says lowly, and after that, they both jolt into action.

They head back through the clearing, at a faster pace now, he sprinted in front as quick as he could manage. His gangling legs hurdling easily over the debris, and obstacles that were littered in his way. She held her skirts far higher than was proper, her collar chaffing against her neck as she ran, cool sweat beading on her brow from the exercise as the pair of them clattered back through the alleys. Thomas waited for her, and when the passageway widened, he grabbed her hand, and they ran together, turning corners, left, skidding right. Vianne can’t recall how many things she has bashed herself into. sharp corners of brick walls grabbing at her shoulder, leaving a smear of red brick dust on her clothes. Her shin’s bruised, she was certain, from an overturned waste bin she collided into harshly, as it was cleverly obscured by the smog. Thomas’s once kept hair now swung straight, obsidian, tresses down into his eyes. They were both panting and perspiring by the time they came to another wider clearing. In her rush, it doesn’t register that this was an unfamiliar route. They hadn’t come this way. Steadying her hand against the nearest wall, the other on her hip. Ignoring the harsh stabbing, tugging pull in her gut that she suspected was a stitch, and the way she felt clammy, and filled with cool, sickly dread. In mortal terror for her friends safety.

“We…didn’t come this way..” She gasps, panting.

“We must have taken a _wrong turn_. Left instead of right..” He cursed. Biting out an expletive that would have made any sailor proud. He strode back the way they came, and she followed, until a sudden flurry of noises made her stop dead in her tracks, spinning about. In the next alley over, perhaps even a mere few yards away, for it certainly sounded close. She heard the sudden clack succession of ladies heels hitting cobbles, in quick speed. With Thomas having hurtled ahead, certain she was behind him, without thinking too much about its consequences, she takes her second biggest risk of the night.

“ _Rose?”_ She calls out loudly, hearing the echo of her cry slither over the jagged rooftiles, reverberating off every damp, brick wall nearby. Whatever she had been expecting, she certainly wasn’t expecting a response.

 _“Vianne!”_ Comes the responding shriek back.

When Thomas heard her shouts, and the replies, he grinds to a halt, his shoes skidding and skipping on the grubby earth below his feet. He spins about, his gut dropping, like a stone in a pond, to his feet when he realised she wasn’t in tow. _He was so certain, in thinking she was behind him,_ following back to the lamp-post where they’d come from. Heading for the way out of this warren hellscape. He runs back again, frantic, searching for the familiar stretch of her figure to pleasure his eyes. But he can find none. They had lost each other.

 _“Vianne?”_ He calls now, his voice agitated, afraid at the loss of her.

“ _Thomas! Help me! Please! HELP ME!...SOMEONE HELP!”_ Comes a scream.

The sound of it makes his _blood curdle_. He runs, not particularly knowing what he was doing but adrenaline to protect the one love of his miserable life was making him frenetic. Every passage, he runs past, he searches,  desperately, and in his sprinting, he recognises the long, squalid street of houses they passed. In no time at all, he runs down. Still calling her name, now hearing no replies, which made him beyond anxious out of his mind. He hears more screams, and he runs so much faster his legs sting at the speed of his gait. Muscles aching sourly with protest at his running for her life. He zips back through the alleys, bashing into walls, certain his coat was ripped. But he had to get to her.

Vianne had, miraculously somehow, gotten back to the street where stood the blind beggar and the lamppost stood. On Dock street. Panting, her body hot and cold at the same time, prickles of fear and sweat stabbing at her every nerve. She canned around for any other people she could see. In her hasty running, the bowler hat she wore hat slipped from her head, and she hadn’t even stopped to grab it, as it slid right away from where she had it pinned. She certainly wasn’t going back to get it now. From across the street, she picks her skirts up, and runs once more, hearing footsteps clatter away, they were heavy, thudding, closer now. She curses the problematic nature of her heels in their , and comes to the alley directly adjacent from the Blind Beggar pub. She looks into it, seeing the smog skirting over a figure, far, far away down the alley, cloaked in large coat, it’s all she sees as it swished out of view. With her lungs stabbing at the exercise, and her throat dry and strained from her excessive panting, she swallows, perfectly ready to head after the mystery running assailant. But she is irritated more with the fact a sensible part of her brain, persuades her that catching them was impossible. They didn’t have their feet incarcerated in the world’s _most awkward_ footwear.

A small scuttling noise to her left captures her attention, and she sidles forwards, looking off into the little side passage, presided over by a building arch, making the place an utter stretch of shadow. Clutter, old wood bottle crates were stacked around, high at waist height, and surrounding overflowing, dirty bins. But then her eyes make out the shape of something, that didn’t belong in the dirt, she steps a little closer, cautiously, before her eyes widen, and she exhales in shock, recognising that was she saw, was in fact the hem of someone’s skirts, and booted feet, sticking out from the flotsam around them. And the sound she heard, was feminine sobs and cries, and where she stepped forwards, when she shifts her heel again, she sees crimson spattered wet on her shoes. _Blood._

Hearing no more noises surrounding him was driving him to madness, he was sure of it. And when he came across Vianne’s bowler hat, laying on its side in the dirt. He cries her name again, not caring he had knelt in the dirt in his spotless suit to retrieve it. He scrambled out of the alley, relieved to see that he had managed to find his way out of the poverty swamped labyrinth. The Blind Beggar was directly to his right now. He was back to where they were led astray into the dark, scummy back alleys of this backwater. He calls for her again. Not knowing where she was, was literally ripping his heart apart. His heart pounds faster when he hears her reply. Her voice too was grave, and lined with tones of urgency.

“Thomas! _Over here! QUICK.”_ She calls, his ears pinprick to listen where it came from. His eyes land on the alley opposite the pub, which still roared with activity. Judging by the din, he could hear growls, snarls and shouts. Which led him to believe that the drunkards within were staging a beloved dog-fight. Past that racket, he sprints across the smoggy street, over the uneven cobbles, coming to the mouth of the passageway. And when he did, and he stepped closer, the sight that he saw would forever stay in his head.

They were too late, their running back had been in vain.

Rosamund price was laid on her back, in the gutter, surrounded by waste, as if she herself was another piece of useless debris. Used up, and discarded to the wayside. Vianne was crouching over her, removing her new brand velvet jacket, damning it to ruin already, as she balled it and placed it under Roses’ head. _Garment be damned_. Thomas could see she was valiantly a medical professional, trying to save a young woman, he friends life. For Miss Price’s head was stretched far back. And her pale throat had been cut from ear to ear. Vianne’s arms, up to her wrists were smeared with blood. He watched Roses face, eyes wide, scared, filled with tears as she spluttered and wheezed.

“Call for the police, Thomas, and a doctor…” Vianne orders him quickly. Her eyes silver with unshed tears, her face stern and in charge. He scatters across the cobbles where he had come, and bursts into the public house, aware numerous pairs of eyes cling to him, and his grand entrance. He almost choked at the scent of ale, unwashed male bodies, and stale tobacco ash ripe in the unclean air. He wrangled his way to the bar, and spoke severely in his most commanding tone. “A woman out there has been attacked and left _for dead_. You need to send word for a doctor and a policeman _this instant.”_ He insisted. The stout, barman, with a face like thunder, a stained shirt, and matted mutton chops merely grumbles a dismissive response.

“One of those prozzy’s got herself ‘urt again? Their _not worth_ the time savin’, mate. A woman like that. You should stick to your side of the river and all those _prim, fancy lasses_. Stead of comin’ into, _my_ , pub and _orderin’ me_ about like you’re the queen _o’ bleedin’ sheba_.” He remarks in hostility. As Thomas doubted there were any baronets in amongst the strictly working class, and working men’s crowd around him. These men were docker’s, worker’s, builder’s, and haulers. The barman assesses his fine dress, clean clothes, and handsome accent as a thing to be deeply offended by. Coming into a public house, demanding all.

For Thomas, that answer simply wouldn’t do. Fuelled by the rage he felt for the person who’d attacked a defenceless woman, such as Rosamund. He punches his hands through the air, across the bar, and fists them in the grubby man’s lapels, and brings them sharply together, almost nose to nose, he hears glasses shatter, falling to the floor. Smashing. But he doesn’t flinch a _single muscle._

“Call the police now _, you hideous swine_ , or I swear as god is my reliable witness, that doctor who you are kindly going to fetch for me, will need to _sew_ the tiny pieces of you back together by the _time I’m done.”_  He growls in a low promise. He replaces the man back on his feet, snatching himself away. Righting his clothes. With his mood instantly changed, the barman scurries off, and Thomas sees him dutifully jumping into action. When he turns around, the whole pub, silent and unmoving, is staring at him. The tension, and violence of him keeping them quiet. He strides to the door, and walks out, back into the night. Off across the road again, hearing digs barking in the distance.

When he came back, he slowed, and then stood stock still, terrified and astounded by what he was witnessing. It occurs to him then, oddly, the first woman he loved was capable of causing such bloodthirsty, carnage. But the second, she was trained to try and save, and care after such violence. The contrast is what serves to make him fascinated, impressed and proud of Vianne all the more. She was a saviour, through and through. Violence made him squirm. Seeing it was a flashback of all the bad things he had done, and what had been done to him. His hands started to tremble, and he felt sick, and feverish.

“Give me your cravat.” Vianne demands in a sharp, professional voice as she pressed down on the wound, trying – in vain – to stem the steady flow of blood. “Rose. Darling. You’re going to want to go to sleep. But you listen to me, _don’t you dare_ shut those eyes, my love, you _hear me?_ Stay with me…” She speaks loudly, sternly. But her voice was emotive. And he could see she was choking down her sorrow and shock. She’d dressed wounds a million times over, addressed patient after patient, all of them perfect strangers. _But she’d never had to try and save a friends life._

His fingers fly to his throat, and after undoing the knot, he whips the thin slither of material out from his collar. Kneeling beside her in the dirt, he hands it to her. And she snatches it efficiently from his grip, pressing that to the deepest part of the cut.

“ _W-ww_ hat can I do?” He asks, crouching next to her. Seeking instruction. Vianne hears the tremor, and fear in his voice. She forgets, she is a veteran of Colenso, Magersfontein, Spionkop, St Thomas’s Medical, and the Royal London. It took a mighty lot to shake her, she forgot that others weren’t so familiar with the sight of gory, fatal wounds, as this. It would take a truly great calamity indeed, to shake her. She always winced at the insensitive, unfeeling nature of that. In a way, her calculative measures made her a great nurse, for she had the icy, callous knowledge that could diagnose and cure most anything, and when she combined it with her unfailing kindness, she was a remarkable nurse.

“The assailant was left handed.” She speaks in a low voice, as she shifted her bloodied hands over the wound. Thomas looks across, confused

“How _on earth_ can you tell? Will she… _be alright?”_ He asks gravely. She doesn’t answer the latter of his questions. And that should have been enough of an answer for him.

“I’ve seen it before at the Royal. My guess is her throat was cut from behind, the wounds the deepest on the right side. And vice versa, if a person is right handed, the wound is deepest on the left…” She mumbles. They both look down in trepidation at Rose, whose protests were quietening. Vianne ground her teeth, stemming back tears, as she saw that Roses eyes were starting to flutter shut, blinking. Resting closed for a few seconds. She was also stammering words with the last of her breath.

“I’m _sorry._ _Oh-god_. Vianne. _I’m so_ sorry. _Forgiveme-.”_ She rambles. Her voice strained from crying. Vianne pays no heed to the blood on her hands, and cups the side of her ex-companions face, and nods. Trying her best not to cry too.

 _“Sssssh.”_ Vianne speaks. “ _Sssssh, now_.” Trying to calm her. “There’s _not a thing_ to forgive. My love. He was a _wicked, wicked man_ , to _the both_ of us..” She whispers back to her dying friend. Gently stroking her cheek, Roses’ hand comes up, to clutch her friends. Holding limply. She’d lost too much blood. She was _too weak._ If they’d have gotten to her sooner, _maybe,_ they could have helped her. _And she didn’t just mean in regards to tonight._

They both watched, as she took her last few, gasping, shuddering breaths. Her large, dolls eyes, gazelessly fixed on the small slither of heavens above, jammed between the rooftops of two jagged, squat, grey houses. And then, she drifted away, her chest sinking down as her last breath was pulled from her lungs. Spirited up into a wicked, fateful, polluted London night. She didn’t deserve that. She had family, she should have died an old woman, tucked up, warm in her bed, smiling at her loved ones, her large family as she passed. Instead, she had left this world in unimaginable pain, fear and tragedy. There wasn’t even a starry sky winking down at her, letting her glimpse the majesty of the heavens one last time. There was only smog, to leave her with a last look at this shabby, disgraceful world.

A large breath left Vianne’s lips, and she pressed the back of her clean wrist to her mouth. Shutting her eyes tight, feeling hot tears squeeze from them. Thomas stroked her back. Then, wordlessly, he took off his coat, shrugging his shoulders out of it, and placing it across Rose’s limp, lifeless body. He hated the way her eyes were open, wide and unseeing, staring up at the skies. Sobbing now, Vianne reaches under, and presses her fingers down on her friends eyes. Resting them shut. Before re-drawing the veil of his black coat over her body.

She sniffs, and slumps into his side, crying. And he welcomes her there. He folds an arm around her, tucking her into his chest, for comfort, and they both wait, _wordlessly_ , for help to come.

 

~

 

 


	18. The Dreadful Wait

 

 

~

 

A jolt wakes her, and as she snaps too, eyes blinking open, she realised it was her own body that wakes her. Her mouth was dry, her eyes were blurred, and dry, and her body rings, aching, with exhaustion. She takes in a deep breath, and re-examines her surroundings. The previous evenings events still afresh, horrible, violent, and graphic in her mind. She blinks, rubbing her eyes. Her cheek warmed, from the hot body of her lover she had rested against. She felt Thomas’s hand stroke against her back, feeling both the softness of her dress, and the rigidity of her corset under his palm. She hadn’t realised she’d succumbed to sleep, she had put her head on his shoulder merely for support as they sat together, waiting, in the uninspiring hallway, of her majesty’s constabulary head office, more specifically, near the constabulary coroners mortuary. Which was situated just down the hallways from them. They had been directed here by the officers who had been summoned to the scene of the _‘incident.’_ As they _so blithely_ called it. Thomas had corrected them with a growl, that the word they were looking for instead, was in fact _‘murder’_ but all that had earned him, was a sharp, cross look from the constable. And they were told to sit, and wait. And _sat_ , and _waited they had._

So, she had let herself slump onto her Thomas, as he sat on the deeply uncomfortable, creaking wooden chair next to her. He looked across, seeing her tired eyes start to stay more closed, than they were open. He lifts his shoulder that she leant on, up, stretching his arm up, and cuddling her close. Gathering her lithe, tired, sad form close. Feeling the weight of her head rest comforted on his shoulder, he could smell the faint aroma of her perfume, woven into her hair. And when he twisted round and pressed his lips to her forehead in a kiss, she blinks her eyes shut, revelling in his little, loving admirations, and he remarks to himself _how cold_ she was. He tugs his coat to rest over her, rubbing a hand down her arm, his hand reaching for her poorly arm, holding her hand, as it lay amongst the folds of her grubby velvet skirts.

He watched her for a moment, how pale, and exhausted she looked. Her hands still bore traces of mud, and dried blood under her fingernails. She had washed the worst of it off, but the ladies washroom left a lot to be desired, and as such, was not equipped with a scrub brush, The beautiful, malforming, shifting shades of the dress changed in the light, and in the dark, as if it could shift its colours, like some exotic, tropical bird, as if the fabric had a mind that _was entirely_ its own. Her knees, and her hem, were crusted with the rust of dried blood and the black, gritty texture of encrusted mud, much the state of his trousers and boots, for they too were the same, as they knelt with Rose in the gutter, watching her last few moments of life fade away, like a mist of perfume escaping away into the breeze. There one minute, fragrant, alive, vivacious, invisible, but, forgotten the next. Floating away into _nothingness._

Because, Vianne thought, that was how Rose had lived her life. She never _really, truly_ settled anywhere. She drifted, swaying through life, like a beautiful silk scarf on the wind, a pretty thing. One to be admired, fawned over, fussed about, envied. Never belonging anywhere, or to anyone. And the one man she had finally wanted to belong too, she’d discovered was a monster. Vianne personally knew what that was like. But then she feels Thomas’s thumb stroke the back of her knuckles. His hands still swollen, scarred with the result of the violence he’d suffered in the past few weeks. And with that move, she knows that she could empathise with Roses’ situation, but now, _thankfully,_ it didn’t reflect her own. That was the most uplifting thought, she’d ever beheld.

Once more, now awake, she scans around the dank corridor they were sat in, and had been for hours now. Surrounded by the sounds of footprints marching on by, and the drab décor, a two part tiled, the bottom half a murky, stagnant green, and the top a grubby white, the wall ran a long way down the lengthy passageway. Illuminated only by the dowdy lights hung at intervals in the gloomy space. No windows nearby give them any indication of whether it was still night, or if day had dawned.

The air smells like heat, old musky dust, and as a nurse, she recognises the faint tang of carbolic of soda, one part to 50, mingled with perchloride of mercury, if her nose didn’t mistake her, as _often it didn’t_. And the floors had been, _rather shabbily,_ scrubbed with Lysol in the not too distant past. These were aromas she encountered every day, at the Royal. She looks down to the dusty, and dirt crusted floor, and remarks with an odd thought that Matron Davis would have someone’s head _on a pike_ , were they the _sorry state_ of the floors, at the London. _Sloppiness, of any kind, was not tolerated, sloppiness made way for infection, and infection had fatal consequences._ That sentence was hammered into her, night and day, by Matron and Sister, when she first started at the London. In time, it had become her mantra. She reminded herself of it when she was set to scouring floors by hand with a wooden scrub brush til her hands were cracked, and raw, or, when on the district nurse roster, fulfilling such duties as palpating, rubbing old joints, for stuffy old members of the gentry, or doing the knit and flea ridding round at the local community centres paediatric clinic. Her sense of smell was _positively suicidal_ after such a surgical round. As she slaved on in her indecorous duties, in the name of 20th century medicine, that mantra rolled round in her mind.

On seeing she was awake, Thomas spoke up from next to her, his voice a low hush, yet still, the deep rumble of it seemed to echo off the mossy, mould coloured tiled walls that surrounded them, and their grave silence.

“Does she have any family we _need notify,_ other than her father?” He asked soberly. Unsmiling. Fondly stroking her hands still. Looking at the both of their fingers entwined. One of his favourite sights, and biggest sources of comfort.

“She does _n’t- Didn’t have_ anyone _else_.” Vianne answers back sadly. Biting her lip that threatened to tremble, spilling two hot tears of agony for her lost friend down her cheeks. They rolled away, and Thomas reaches for his pristine pocket square, and offers it over. She takes it, but she doesn’t wipe her eyes. Instead she speaks, in anger, and in sorrow.

“I should _have helped her_. When she came to see you, begging, she must have been in _dire straits._ _I should have gone to her._ Offered her.. help… _a. I_ could have helped her safely into a hostel, she would have been cared for. Had a hot meal, three times a day. A soft bed to sleep in, help to cure her injuries. Instead, I let her recede into those abominable slums. Fleeing from shabby boarding house, to boarding house, escaping a violent man… _God, she must’ve been terrified_. Running for her life, and _what did I do?_ I cowered away in a Ritz suite, only thinking of _myself…I’m a selfish idiot._ I’ve been _too self-absorbed_ to see that one of _my friends_ needed help _.”_  She sobbed. Her face collapsing into her hands. Her shoulders and back hunched forwards, wracking as she cried. _Thomas ached for her_. He gently encouraged her to look up, sliding forwards onto his knees on the dusty floor, his hands on her shoulders. She stifled sobs long enough to speak.

“What _are you doing?”_ She sniffed. “Get up, you’ll _ruin_ those breeches…” She fretted, twisting his pocket square in her hands. He tilted his head, and looked compassionate as he looked up at her, holding their hands, joined together, on her knees. He gave her a look that let her know they were already ruined.

“Vianne. You’ve been awake now, for _eleven straight_ hours. Now _you listen_ , no matter the situation between you, tonight, you lost one of your closest friends. You saw her taken from this world in a violent, and brutal manner, and r _ight now, my love_ , you cannot let yourself get crushed under the weight of all the _‘what if’s’_ trust me, it’s a dark pit there’s no easily crawling out from. And whilst it may seem the easiest thing to let it swallow you whole. _Trust me_ , I know how strong you are _, you’re so strong,_ and I know _your heart is breaking_ for her, although you must try _as hard_ as possible not to let it take hold. You are the most _caring, gentle_ woman I’ve ever had _the undeserved pleasure_ to know, and love. You _do so much_ for others, in your work, and your personal life. And I _cannot_ allow you to let your brain rot away, fretting over the one poor soul whom _you couldn’t save._ It seems _callous, I know,_ thinking of it that way. But, _you did help_ her. Though too late to save her, _you were there_ , as a friend, holding her hand when she passed. You gave her a good death. And _that’s something_ , is _it not?”_  He explains softly.

She shuts her eyes. Feeling their exhausted, dry weight itch, raw with sadness, and her tears as she rubbed them. She swallowed her grief, that lay thick, like a cold stone caught, choking her, in her throat. She sighs, feeling exactly as he had predicted, tired, wrung out, like a shirt that had gone through a wrangle more times than was healthy. Now, her mood was fraying at the edges, and she can think of nothing but sleep, answers that so far evaded them, and her sadness, mourning for her friend. She doesn’t confirm that he’s right, but she nods meagrely, and that’s enough for him. He cups her head, and kisses her forehead, holding her.

“It’s a wretched thing.” She whispers, holding him back. He nods, nuzzling his nose into her neck. Inhaling deep the unique scent of her. A soft, clean fragrance of Yardley’s lavender soap, and the opulence of her French perfume. He was glad to see her neck was warmer than her hands. That was good. It meant she wasn’t going into shock.

“The _most wretched_ of all things.” He agrees.

“It’ll _be alright_. You know? I promise. _It’ll be ok.”_  He whispers to her. Kissing her cheek after. “ _I’m here_. We’re safe still, and we will _get justice_ for whomever did this to her.” He speaks.

“Justice seems to be moving at an infuriatingly _slow pace,_ for my liking…” She grumbles, seeing this makes his smile, if but a little. Catching a stray tear with his thumb.

“I think that gait is actually that of the _, sturdy_ , constable who took our statements…” Besides which… I called in a favour from a dear friend… that should help move things along swiftly…” He smiles secretly.

She frowns. Not knowing what, _or whom_ , he meant. “And, _do I know_ the identity of such dear friend?” She asks.

Thomas grins, he had peered down the dingy hallway before he had let the words cross his very lips. Seeing the person he’d asked the clumsy constables to send a note for, fetching them here to aid in the process of Rosamund’s post mortem. Taking place not far from where they sat. She doesn’t notice their mystery friend approach. Until he stops, and clears his throat beside them.

“I believe you know him, _rather well_. Ms James.” Erik smiles warmly. His accent was gentle, and his words were akin to an embrace to hear. Soothing.

Vianne looks over, and see’s none other than Dr. Erik Harriden stood before them, alongside the chairs they sat on. Thomas rises from the floor, and firmly, fondly shakes Harriden’s hand. Their kinship evident. Erik was fully kitted, in his tweed suit, with his stark white coat overlapping his neat uniform, his scratched surgical bag clutched in his hand. His eyes are full of fondness, and a dash of sympathy. No doubt Thomas had included in his missive, the reasons as to why they needed him urgently.

“Erik.” Vianne smiles, coming to her feet. She gladly kisses the man on the cheek. Relieved to see him. He holds her hand, and givers her his best consoling look. She’d seen it before, of course, when doctor’s had to give the sorry news that they could only do so much, that, unfortunately, fate had other plans for some poor souls. She never imagined herself to be on the receiving end of it, before. It was, _harrowing._ Recognising that this was _all so very real_ , and horrible.

“How is _that arm_ , Nurse?” He asks her. Holding her fingertips, stretching her arm out as he inspected the bandages. Snowy white, save for the crimson blood that reached to halfway up her forearm. He looked across at her, concerned.

“Not _my blood._ Doctor.” She tells him, darkly.

Her eyes beheld a note of sadness, he was unfortunately, used to seeing linger in her dazzling cobalt eyes. He saw it when he met her, and hired her two years ago. Of course, she was over-qualified for the role of being a lecturers assistant. RRC DCM, trained in St Thomas’s, and having experience on every ward, she was a readily able, more than proficient, combat nurse. She had more experience in her, than most, if not all, of the qualified doctors and nurses in the London had in their little fingers. And yet, the damned place was _so strict_ , it  required her to have more training before she could graduate from being a probationer, to a nurse. It was laughable. Nonetheless, he called her nurse _anyway_. It was the title _she deserved_ , though she _hadn’t earnt_ it in the hospitals eyes, as she had, more than so, _in his._ He knew she was right for the role, and gave her that job the very same day. She was rich, that much he knew, an heiress, all the woman whom applied for the job were wealthy in their own right, hailing from good schools, and wealthy families. Vianne was the _only_ one who seemed to him, like wasn’t seeking after such a job for the, _more than paltry_ , sum of its wage, and the mere distraction, to get her out of the house. But because, she _needed_ to work. _She had too_. She couldn’t sit and toil over her past, all she had given up, for another wretched day. She itched to re-join the world. Forget her dark, miserable past.

“I’m _so sorry_ about your friend. _Mein Liebling._ It’s… a _very tough_ thing to have to go through _.“Sie haben mein tiefes Mitgefül._ He expressed." Wishing her his most ardent sympathies.

 _"Vielen Dank_. Erik.“ She smiles back. That was another thing about working in an East End hospital, the amount of languages that came through the place was astonishing, but they’d both grown used to it. Romanian, Latvian, Russian, Yiddish, French, German, of course, and Italian _, even._ She’d learnt smatterings of them all. She’d had too, having to deal with patients whom spoke no English. It was easier than having to get in a translator every time. And the hospitals benefactor had strong connections with the Jewish community, as Lord Rothschild was one of the main benefactors to the hospital.

“I asked Erik to come. I thought, as a respected physician from the London. That would, be _more suitable_ , than some constabulary coroner.”

“I have the paperwork to claim jurisdiction over her persons. They should have no trouble letting me take over. After all, in such cases as this, when friends, or relatives of the deceased wish for their own, selected, doctor to perform an autopsy.” He explained to them both. “You were wise to contact me, Mr. Sharpe… _again.”_ Harriden professed.

Vianne looked across to her man. And he at her. “You _are full_ of surprises. Mr. Sharpe.” She speaks with gratitude in her voice.

“When it occurred to me we need an _expedient,_ and unbiased doctor, I _knew exactly_ who to write for…” Thomas told with a cunning smile, and light mirth in his eyes.

“Right. I’ll go and see what I can do to help…” Erik nods. And bids them a polite excuse as he strides away, and into the coroner’s office. Down the long hall, and to the left. They both watched him go, sat down, waiting, again.

Vianne sighs. Glad Erik was here, but still madly infuriated by the length of the wait. It was driving her insane, she was sure. _She wanted answers_. She rested her head back against the wall, looking up at the cobweb strewn ceiling. Drifting in the idle, hot air that surrounded them.

“It’s _the waiting_ I can’t bear…” She says as she watches that slip of a filmy cobweb float, and drift in the air.

“I know, it’s _a rot_ for the mind.” He sympathised. Turning his head as he too leant against the wall. Twisting it sideways to talk to her.

“O’ for some sunny spell. To dissipate the shadows of _this hell…”_  She groans. Wondering when her life would seem uplifted from the current dark, shadows of cryptic mystery that cloaked it. Then, she thought, she’d rather like it if her and Thomas, could, maybe think about their future, a little… or just, go out to dine, perhaps. It seems she had gotten her first and only love back, but constantly had to be watching over her shoulder, and he too. She thought ahead, to a day when they were out of danger. _She wondered what they would do then…_

“Say they are gone – with the new dawning light. Steps forth _my lady_ bright.” He smiles back.

“And here, I thought _Blake_ was your literary repertoire?” She grins tiredly. He smiles wider, and reaches over, plucking one, perfect coil of red with his fingers, letting the silk of it glide across his fingers.

“ _I see her, and I am lit. For she is beyond compare. The girl with oceans for eyes, and fire_ _for hair_ … How’s that?” He rasps over at her. She chuckles slightly.

“Lovesick.” She answers with mirth. He  chuckles now too. And they share a look. Both exhausted, covered in grime, and still with the dreadful events of the night hanging over the both of them. But their look was one of unity. Of such, soul-warming love, that they didn’t dare doubt the strength of the connection they now shared. It was one that left the both of them yearning for a time beyond this, when they could be assured that all the darkness in their lives was extinguished for good.

“Vianne?” He asks her gently, taking her hand in his.

“I know, that now it seems almost impossible to fathom what will happen _, after…”_ He trailed off. Leaving the hard words unspoken. “But.. I was, rather hoping, that, _we… you and I_ , would…” He paused, searching for the right word. She looks at him, gently, earnestly.

“..That we _wouldn’t be apart_ , anymore.” He asks, seeking her approval. She clutches his hand tight.

“I’d have to say, that, _I’ve… pondered_ over that very same _thought, also_ , Thomas.” She informs him. His eyes brighten, and his eyes crease with the gentle force of his smile. He looked enraptured, and she felt monstrous. After that day at his office, she’d never reallocated another moment in which she could _tell him_. Things had all moved so fast. And recently, that thought came back to her more and more, given the nature of their _intimate_ companionship.

“It seems we’ll be putting _it on hold,_ whilst _all_ this is happening around us…” He speaks with sadness. She nods in agreement. The unspoken thing hanging in the air between them was the fact that they hoped this situation would pass without any further grievance coming to the both of them. Nirvana was within their grasp, but the gates still looked too far away to be upon them just yet. It was torture. Having heaven within their touches, but forever being just a h _airs breadth away from grasping it._

“Perhaps this isn’t the place I should have brought it up? In the most dismal corridor in all of the British Isles. At the very least, I had in my mind’s eye, that it would be over a champagne, candle-lit, red rose strewn table at the most expensive, elegant restaurant in London.” He supposed with guilty humour.

“I don’t _need all that_ extravagance. My dear. _I’ve never needed that_. _Just you_ is wholly enough.” She hushed softly. She moved close to him, and quickly pressed a sweet kiss to his lips. Her small, cold hand stroked the side of his neck. And when she pulls away, she admires him from up close. Feeling his warm breath ghost across her lips, and that minty, soapy musk of him is stronger now. He kissed her back.

“Should we be _embracing_ in a public place?” He asks her sassily. Crooking one dark brow upwards. Looking every inch like a man in love.

“As an Heiress, I _should_ know better…” She remarks. She sits back in her seat, blushing a little, seeing that a disgruntled policeman slid past, giving them both a snide look of angry revulsion. They both looked at their feet, and smiled secretly after he’d passed them.

“And suddenly, I feel like _an errant_ schoolchild.” She remarks quietly. Thomas smiles, looking into his lap. They look up as another figure comes down the corridor. Vianne rubs her eyes, and yawns tiredly, Thomas continues to shut his eyes, with his head rested on the wall. But they both pay attention when the policeman stops in front of them.

“You _Mr. Sharpe?”_ He asks in a cockney gruff. Thomas frowns, and nods an ‘of course’ and the policeman’s beefy fingers handed him a small missive. _Well – shoved_ it to him, would have been a more accurate description. Thomas took it from its rudely offered hand, wary of the constables scowl as he did.

 _“S’not_ part of my job to take notes here and there…” He grumped.

“ _Now, now_. Constable. You make _a delightful_ secretary..” Thomas japed with a cunning smile. Vianne bit her laughs back. She didn’t think they’d be very well received. The policeman ‘hmphed’ at Thomas disapprovingly, before he stalked back down the corridor, his ill temper evident in his lolloping stomp.

“ _Charming_ man…” Thomas remarked dryly. Ripping open the note, and reading it, his eyes scanned across, his face fell after he finished reading it. He shuffled it back into the envelope, and shoved it into his waistcoat pocket. His sigh was one of annoyance, and concern.

“My foreman writes that there’s _been an accident_ at the foundry. One of the large machine boilers was over pressurised, and he tells me it exploded. Some men on the factory floor have been hurt. It’s an emergency, _I have_ to be there…” Here spoke quickly, tones of worry seeping into his tone. Vianne clasps his hand, and she can see the torn agony on his expression. Leaving her, alone, to deal with this, when his work place desperately needed his attention too.

“ _Go._ Thomas, _you must go._ Erik’s here, I’ll wait on his report, I’ll be _fine.”_ She assures him. He comes to a stand, still there was discomfort on his pale face. Their joviality had vanished, there was only unease in his blue eyes now. He looked down at her, conflicted. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, breathing her in deeply, not wanting to let her go.

“You _keep safe,_ now.” He instructs, pulling on his dirty, mussed coat on, settling it on his shoulders. With one last squeeze of her hand, he strides away. His gut churning, not wanting to turn his back on her for even a second. But, he had too. And he bounds down the stairs, and makes his way out of the station the way they came. The grouchy constable who’d given Thomas the note, behind his solid wooden desk. Grumped at his leaving, pleased to see the lofty baronet had left the building. The telephone rang, it’s _shrill ring_ blaring through the dusty, dark halls. The constable answered, and a gruff voice spoke up from the other end, through the crackling phone line.

 _“He’s left_ the building?” The voice asked.

“Yes _, Sir._ Mr Wakeman. He has. Just watched him go myself.” The policeman replied.

 

~

 

 


	19. Despicable Men

 

 

 ~

 

He slid from the coach, quickly paying the driver, and bounding across the street. The gait of a man with no time to waste. The Foundry was directly ahead, he scurried fast across the street, his strong, long legs carried him quickly, his mind set to the dire consequence of the damages this incident may have caused to his workers, and his machinery. He wets his lips as he treads through the yard, seeing it was unusually empty. _They must’ve cleared everyone._ He thinks. His foreman, _Thompkins, his able, right hand, probably sent everyone home with a day’s pay whilst he sorted out the catastrophe._ He headed for the main factory floor, pushing open the heavy, solid sliding door, reveals a bustle of people, he can see, thronging in his office. Through the misty, murky windows, he sees a gaggle of men, stood, most likely awaiting him.

Breathless from his scurrying from the cab, and the tug of his straining, tired muscles from pulling open the heavy door. He proceeds forwards. Through the swathing path that cut through the bulking, heavy machinery, now, it was silent. When it should have been roaring. That settles _a certain something_ in him, something stirs, becoming uneasy. It was just before five at night, they weren’t scheduled to stop yet. And he saw no signs of any machine being damaged from an explosion. The place was as spotless as usual. He slows, coming to a stop. Realising. He shut his eyes, and cursed under his breath. Especially when he heard feet shuffle behind him. The clang of the door behind him, makes him turn, and he sees two, scruffy, brawny men stood behind him. Smirking as if they knew their pockets were soon to be lined. They didn’t advance on him thought. They stayed stood in front of the door, guarding it. _Shielding him from an easy escape._ He turns back around, seeing more strangers now opened the door to his private office, and two men now flanked the door, but Thomas can make out another one, sat down, comfortably. _At his desk._

His fists, and his jaw, _clenched._ He narrowed his eyes into the room ahead. Prepared to face this monstrosity, if this was how it would come to a nasty head… then maybe _this way_ , he could _sever it,_ and he and Vianne would be left alone, _for good._

“He who _hides_ behind numerous faces to cause his harm, must be the _worst sort_ _of coward_. St. Clair.” Thomas calls into the office before him. As he stalks slowly, coming to the door, he glares coldly at the two men stood there, until they both part, backing away, allowing him to enter _his own office_.

And when he does, he is startled to see that he wasn’t addressing Henry St. Clair, as he’d thought. But instead, he was instead talking to a man he’d never seen before.

And he certainly didn’t _look threatening,_ but his behaviour, _and company,_ suggested _otherwise._ He looked like a stout, genteel old lawyer. Gleaming gold spectacles, a balding head, and a figure that wasn’t deprived of culinary extravagance. His rows of flabby chins disappeared behind his stiff collar, becoming one with his neck, the flabbiness well hidden behind a neat tie. His face was podgy, and his belly was rotundas, barely contained by a stiff, proper waistcoat and fine coated dress. A man of money, and wealthy, judging by the cut of his clothes, and the width of his waistline. In any other space, Thomas thought, the man would look no more threatening than that of a fluffy teddy-bear. But in here, sat at his desk, his flabby, thick-as-sausages fingers enclosed around his private possession, the silver photo frame, made Thomas realise the _coldness_ of his grey, dead eyes behind his spectacles. Almost unseeing, unfeeling. Cold, and devoid of any feeling.

Those eyes made Thomas think briefly, _fleetingly_ , of Lucille’s. Calculative, sharp and piercing. Because maybe this man, wasn’t scary, maybe he did have to outsource thugs to carry out violence in his stead. But there was a manipulative, and deviously cunning breed of hatred in his eyes that made Thomas’s blood turn _to ice. This man was not threatening, but he was, most certainly, not, to be perceived as stupid, or unintelligent._

“Do you know, it’s funny, I expected you to look _more monstrous_. As it is, Mr. Sharpe, my first, overall impression is one of… _deflation._ I expected a monster. A cad, a scoundrel. You look _like none_ of those things. You look like a feeble villain conjured from a female mind, living in the pages of some _drippy_ , bodice-ripping, novel. I expected the man who committed such atrocities as the ones _I know_ you have, to be….” He paused to sigh. “ _Just. Well…..more.”_ The stranger explained. Slamming down a thick folder atop Thomas’s desk.

Seeing the man didn’t even flinch at the movement. He relaxed back in the man’s study chair, hearing it creak and crack under his new weight, the shift of his position. He folded his arms to rest on his gigantic belly, his thumbs twiddling as he relaxed back in the office that wasn’t his.

Thomas walked closer, though his brain was shouting at him not too, and on the desk, he sees that the thick paperwork, was in fact a paper folder, emblazoned with his name. Written in indifferent typewriter font. _Sharpe, comma, Thomas. Ex-Husband._ He smiled, wryly, lifting the cover and seeing a black and white photograph of a sight he never thought he’d lay eyes on again. All the more intimidated by the fact that someone had been keeping a sick form of highly detailed surveillance on him. He let the folder shut, lifting his hand away, and smirking at the man opposite. It was both amazing and anti-climactic to see a folder, containing, and listing all the paper minutia of his life, bound together. It was flimsy, and unbelievable, in _an odd_ sort of way.

“You’re _very well_ acquainted with me. Sir. But I am afraid I don’t return _the happy favour…_ ” Thomas spoke snidely. His humour made the man chuckle, and those grey eyes, gleam coldly behind the pane of glass that separated them from the world.

“I’m very intimately acquainted with one of your, _cherished, confrère’s,_ Shall we say…” He explained, reaching to his side, and slapping down another set of photograph’s. Thomas baulked at their contents, though he didn’t show it. They all contained images, black, white and grainy, of him, _and Vianne. And they were not pictures of delicate content._ There was one, dark, but recognisable, them at the opera house, entwined, to make Henry jealous. Both their hands roaming one another’s bodies. The second one, was a snapshot of later that night, of them embracing on the street. When they’d donned their coats to leave, Thomas had tucked her lithe form into his coat with him, enclosing his arms, and his jacket about them as they kissed. The third, was a lurid shot, through Vianne’s bedroom window, it showed the pair of them, _consummating, their reunion_ , after the Opera that night. The first time in two years that they’d had lustful contact with one another, naked, pleasured and writhing together in ecstasy. The shot had clearly been taken from far away, but he could make out the form of her, below him as he loved her. He could see the wide flare of his broad back and shoulders, and her curves, spread under him. He tried not _to shake_ with rage, and disgust.

“Vianne.” He whispers harshly. Looking at the pictures. Before his raging eyes snapped back up to the slithering, wretched stranger opposite.

“I’m her Uncle. Hector Wakeman. Pleasure to meet you. At last, Mr. Sharpe. I can’t say I’m pleased. To finally meet the absent bastard who, in her ill judgement, my niece decides to, _fuck,_ instead of staying true to her engaged vows.” He snaps across to Thomas. His face contorted to spit the curse word out foully.

 _“Oh,_ believe me _, Sir,_ it’s a hell of a lot more than _just, fucking.”_  Thomas promises just as vulgarly as he had. His eyes were lethal, and ice in their gaze to this ‘supposed relative’ of hers he’d never heard a word of.

 _He laughed. He barked_ out a short, staccato burst of laughter that made Thomas’s body tense, wanting to plant his fist violently into the side of the man’s face.

“You believe she can love a man _such as you?_ My, but you are both _romantic, blind, naive fools_ if you believe that for even a _second._ To think, the pair of you could _ever dream_ of having a future together? It’s _laughable…_ ” He commented, chuckling. “You trust her, though don’t you?” He asks. Thomas makes no effort to reply to the man who was making his stomach turn.

He shook his head. Grinning. Amused by the sheer idea of them being anything more than bed-mates. “You really shouldn’t.” He adds.

 _“She’s lying_ to you. And I have a sneaky feeling you haven’t told her all about those big, preying skeletons gathering dust in your closet, either.” He remarks.

Thomas can’t speak. He is too angry. Too livid. If he opens his mouth, he wonders what would happen to him.

“Me and Vianne have no secrets.” He tries to insist in the calmest voice he can muster.

“ _Yes you_ do.” Wakeman replies, annoyed, at the idiot opposite him trying to put up a façade of a healthy relationship between he, and his niece.

“Why do you think she _left you_ Thomas? How do you think she managed it _so easily?_ I helped her arrange _, everything._ The money, the train ticket. The divorce papers. I helped her gather, and sort out the _miserable scraps_ of her ruined marriage match to you…. _You know_ , for a while there, I was truly gutted. The pair of you swanning off, sneaking away to Gretna Green to say your vows. Disappearing under the very eyes of society, to so laughably aspire to what the pair of you so hopelessly called a marriage match. Though, I take my hat off to your tenacious sister. I really thought her clever poisoning methods would finish Vianne off. But, _no_ …” he sighs. “My niece was _too canny_ for that. I really curse her for that sometimes, you know. Her penchant, for being such a skilled nurse. She wrote to me she could _taste_ the strychnine Lucille snuck into her food. _Shame._ _Mores the pity after that,_ Vianne really tricked her into letting her guard down. I think, actually, your twin developed a _keen tendre_ for her. Her harm, turned to kinship. Exactly what I didn’t bloody need. But then again…” He tuts “Women. We can expect no more of them than the _usual fickleness_ of their sex.” He scoffs in disappointment. Thomas remained silent.

“But... I digress. I am being a _trifle, unfair_ , I have to say, I must _thank you._ Were it not for yours and Lucille’s disgusting, _dark love_ for each other, it never would have driven her back to London, and back to _me…_ _Oh_ , how _she ran_ to escape from you, Sharpe. _So scared, so feeble.”_ He mutters.

 _“Stop it.”_ Thomas growls in a reedy voice. The man’s obnoxiousness making his head spin.

“ _Stop what?_ Telling you what _kind of man_ you are?” Hector chortles.

“ _I’m not that_ man anymore.” Thomas insists.

“What, the kind _who fucks_ his sister, or the kind who can’t even keep a wife for a year?” He asks cruelly.

“ _SHUT IT!”_ Thomas snaps loudly. Wakeman looks at Thomas coldly. Coolly surveying his outburst of anger. And then he calmly sneers. “ _Sore_ spot?” He coos nastily.

Thomas would have leapt over the desk and slit his throat right there and then, were he not hopelessly outnumbered and unarmed.

“I’ll tell you why I _don’t want_ to do that. It’s because that man, that sick, incestuous, bastard, is standing in front of me now. But he’s so _eaten up_ by his secrets, all he can do is blindly give me some claptrap about how he and her are so in love. They don’t know _what love_ is. And they certainly _won’t hold_ such a feeling when they finally learn the others _darkest secret.”_ He explains calmly. He looks outside the door to see the two stood, and he nods at them. Summoning them in.

“ _Why did_ you call me here? Merely to insult me?” Thomas asks in a thunderous voice. Wary of the two thugs behind him now moving into the room, his back was too them. But he could hear them. The whine of the doors, the rustle of their clothes, the clunking tread of their heavy boots underfoot.

 _“No_. The purpose for your invitation here was twofold…” Hector explained as if he had grown bored, he reached across, idly rifling through Thomas’s desk drawers. _The man was a vermin, Thomas had decided._

“ _First…”_ Wakeman began, looking blandly up to the men stood behind him. By the time Thomas turns to look, it was too late. One had seized his arm, hoisting his shoulder up, holding him in place. The next minute, he felt a searing pain slash across his right thigh. He cries out, slipping to his knees, the pain doubling, screaming like fire through his veins as his hands clutched round his upper thigh. When he looks down, shuddering, he can see a large, fairly deep slash marring through his black breeches, oozing ruby-black blood down his thigh, as he clutches he can see  the crimson of his blood staining his hands, dribbling fast down his leg. He hissed and cursed through the pain. _He hated blood._ The smell of it, the feel, the taste, _all of it repulses him._ He mumbles something under his breath. “Right handed…” He gasped. Wakeman ignored him, but eyed him shrewdly.

“ _Second…”_ Wakeman continues on. Barely having batted an eyelid. Not even changing a shade at the fact that he had just mortally wounded a man, two paces across from him. He was still flipping through Thomas’s work documents with a fascination that was morbid in its serenity. It was then that Thomas noticed something. Something that Wakeman did, as he had picked up Thomas’s own ink pen, and that sent his heart _pumping full of rage_ , as he tried to ignore the pain _coursing_ through his body. With every beat of his heart, there came _more agony._

“The reason, I am so, _unforgiving_ , of your recent presence in Vianne’s life. Is that you drove away the man I had been trying to set her to marry, for almost _a year and a half._ They’d only been engaged for a mere month when you swanned back into her life. I _needed her_ , to marry St. Clair, before you could seize hold of what was rightfully yours by marriage. Luckily, my existence, Vianne had kept a secret from _you and your murdering sister,_ probably for fear of my safety, the dear _sweet idiot, she is_. I couldn’t _risk it_ being lost to me a second time…”

 _“It?”_ Thomas panted. “ _What it?”_ He grit out.

 _“Money.”_ Hector explained. “ _Lots, and lots_ of money. She’s an heiress, after all. She didn’t tell you just how rich she was, _did she? No._ She’d rather give her money to _grubby_ little orphanages, like St.- _cursed bloody_ \- Anthony’s, and fritter it away donating to hospitals,  Nun’s orders, and _homes_ devoted to helping _the poor.”_ He spewed with disdain.

Thomas was speechless. He grunted through the pain of the cut, feeling panic start to flood his veins. But he fought not to let it. He thought what Vianne would say, _Panic can kill you faster. Remain calm, retain rationality, and try and stem the danger, if at all possible…_ It was as if he could hear her voice _so distinctly_ , as if she _was there, cooing her soft voic_ e into his ear from those rosebud coloured lips. Her breath tickling his ear. He could hear it all _so clearly._

“How does her, _marrying that_ …” He hissed in pain. Sucking in breath harshly. _“Bastard,_ St. Clair get, _you, her_ fortune?” Thomas asks.

“It’s _a confidential family_ matter.” Wakeman defended. “Besides which. He’s _my_ godson. And thus far, he has made an _utter pigs ear_ of trying to get her back, on good terms.” He growled, upset.

“Vianne’s _too clever_ for _a…_ “ Once again, he panted. “ _abusive, thug_ , like him. He’s so self-absorbed in his own arrogance, I’m surprised he had it in him _to notice_ another person enough to be engaged to them, when he’s so _busy bedding_ other women and crowing about how _fantastic-a doctor_ he is…” Thomas seethed. Wakeman looked behind Thomas’s head once more. Sharpe braced himself for the sting _of whatever_ would happen to him next. He almost bit his tongue when a booted foot is brought down sharply on his wounded thigh from behind. He screamed aloud. Puffing breath, fighting the blackness of pain that threatened to cut him off from this _reality entirely_. He grit his teeth, soldiering on, though he wanted to sob and scream. He wouldn’t give this _sick bastard_ the satisfaction. He winced, and he met Hector’s eyes again.

Wakeman watched him, threatening to slump on to the floor. But he straightens his back, and through panting, remains upright, glaring at him. Sweating, bruised, and battered. But defiant _. He hated that._

“You didn’t cut too deep? Now _did you, Phil?”_ We’ve _been burned_ by that before. Have _we not?”_  Wakeman asks, Pointing a glare at the left of Thomas’s shoulder.

“…In order for the plan to work. We need _him alive…_. Which he won’t be if you’d have cut his femoral artery any deeper. You _damned, bloody fool_. Now find the _man a tourniquet_ , and let’s move it out of this… _dank place_. Shall we?” Wakeman ordered civilly.

“You lay _one filthy hand_ on her, Wakeman, and I _will rip your spine out_ _through your teeth_ , I give you my word on that, _you foul bastard…”_ Thomas seethes. Wakeman merely smirks.

“Pathetic…” He sneers down at the man as he comes to a stand _, barely_ looming over him. When he stood, Thomas could see the true extent of the man before him. He was _fat, short,_ and a _poor_ picture of a man to be scared by. He could see that now. “ _Truly pathetic_ …” He grimaced.

“You think that it would be _any strain_ on my behalf to have you killed? It’d be like swatting away _a flea.”_  Wakeman growled. “Just wait til your hear this. Me and Henry _drew straws_. I get to summon you, and he is in charge of bringing Vianne to our agreed, little meeting place. He’s waiting for her as we speak. Best not to imagine what he’ll do to her when _he gets her_ alone…. It’s unsavoury though, I bet. _Usually is with him._ He does so enjoy, violently, exerting his dominance over women. They are _such darling, weak little_ things when it comes down to it…” He explained pettily.

“ _Not. Vianne.”_ Thomas pledged simply. Because she was strong. She was a survivor through and through. For hell’s sake, she’d survived Allerdale Hall, and the wrath of Lucille Sharp. And not with violence, or intimidation. But with kindness. She really had killed her enemy with kindness, she could survive the tenacity of his formidable relative, she could surely survive the scrutiny, and betrayal of her own. He had to believe that. _He had too_. It was, his only hope. Otherwise he’d perish from the worry, _right here_ on his office floor…

Even though he wanted to wring the man’s neck ten times over for knowing that he’d sent St. Clair to prey on her, to lie in wait, as they spoke. It made his heart twist, and turn, and his stomach churn with icy dread. If he could have had his way, he’s run the miles away to Great Russell street, even with a cut leg, to go and save her from harm. St. Clair was a vicious bastard, and _he would_ harm her. _That much he believed._

“”Do you _know all I’ve_ had to do to get my hands on that money? It was bad enough thinking that you and your rotten sister had got your grubby hands all over it. So when I learnt she was leaving you, and returning home. It was like a _second coming_. I had _my chance_ , at last, at the money I’ve been denied all my life. Do you know how much is safely in that trust fund that I can’t touch? Almost _half a million._ And my stupid, oaf, of a brother, Artmeis. Left it _all to her_ , in his will, Wasted on his _snivelling, little red_ - _headed brat._ They left her in my care, too. All I had to do, was raise her, without issue, and wed her to an amenable man. Then, in her marriage, that money _could, finally, be mine_. I thought Henry was so right for her. He’s, arrogant and, his gambling debts I believe you saw the nasty end of, and I knew his _temper ran hot,_ but I thought he could make a _decent job of it._ But, _unsurprisingly_ , he too failed me. And now… _you.  You,_ are my most recent _annoyance.”_  He clarified.

“ _I’m glad_ to have been an inconvenience.” Thomas spat. For which he received a solid kick to the ribs. Winding him in an instant. As if someone snuck in and stole the very breath from his body.

“Better you had stayed in Cumbria, with _your lover_. Than get involved with _me, Henry, and Vianne_.” He seethed. “What’s more. I’ll let you in on my dirty little secret, _one more_ for you to _carry, can’t hurt.”_  He told. Leaning down now, He stayed close to Thomas’s ear, and began to whisper.

“The way I finally get my hands on that money? I slit _her worthless throat_ , and _when you_ are framed for the crime. I get, her money, that she’ll leave me in the will I’m going to have drawn up.” He explained. “She dies, tonight. At my hand, Sharpe. And _you’ll rot_ in prison for it.”

Thomas lunged for him. Despite the pain in his leg. He kicked, he thrashed, he wanted to scream his lungs right out. But he is restrained, on his knees. And a pinching tourniquet is tied around his wounded thigh.

“You’re a _rotten, worthless, reprobate_.” Wakeman snarled.

“The feeling’s _utterly mutual._ ” Thomas rumbled back. “I may have a dark past, _yes. I’ve never_ admitted I _hadn’t._ And I’m _ashamed, it kills me, I’m ashamed_ of every single minute I _didn’t love_ that woman _properly,_ like she deserved. I thought I was a monster, but you… _you.”_ Thomas shook his head in disbelief. “To raise your brothers child you so _clearly hated_ , just so, years later, you could get her fortune after….” He felt sick _even thinking_ the _word ‘kill._ ’ “…Rearing your own niece, like…like- _like a prized lamb_ for slaughter. That sweet, wonderful girl, whose only ever helped, cared and nourished people. _How fucking could you?”_ Thomas spits. Tears clouding his eyes. He tried to squirm again, but he is held tight. Braced back by strong arms behind him.

Wakeman shrugged. Thomas knew in that moment the man was a pure, sociopath.

“ _Boo-hoo_. I’m a bad man. Congratulations on working it out. Now. We really had best be leaving. Or we’ll miss our dear, dear Vianne. And the remaining _hours_ of her life, she has left. Now, before we get to opening the champagne to her _unfortunate_ demise, may I ask _… DO you_ know _her_ dirty secret?” He enquires.

Thomas glares. Wakeman chuckles.

“I’ll let her explain, then. _Oh, it’s so damn_ obvious, when you think about it. However, of course, It’s a good one, you’ll be floored. You _really will.”_  He predicted. “I can’t stand the grubby little things. But I’m sure we have our differences towards them..” He told. Thomas doesn’t ask anything more.

 _“One_ thing…” Thomas speaks up.

Wakeman seems irritated by his interjection. He turns and exhales angrily, glaring down at Thomas.

“You’re an obvious, despicable, showman. And you’ve overplayed your hand saying that it was, entirely Henry, who messed up with Rose. You’d happily lead me and Vianne to believe that it was St. Clair _who’d killed her_ last night…. But _it wasn’t, was it, Wakeman?”_

The first hints of something, _akin_ , to panic crossed those bland, grey eyes. And his mouth twitched in nervous anger. His brow started to prickle with sweat and panic. Thomas gestured with a nod of his chin to his desk.

“Couldn’t help but notice… You hold the pen with your _left hand._ ” Thomas snarled. “I won’t be _rotting anywhere_ if the police seize such information…” He threatens. Fighting back.

It was Wakeman who attacked first, one shuddering blow to the side of his head, and Thomas can feel the dripping, warm substance that could have only been blood, dripping down the side of his face. The next ones leaves his lungs empty, his face ringing, and _one name_ on his lips before blackness takes him.

_“Vianne.”_

 

~

 

 


	20. Nasty Discoveries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger for this chapter, if anyone has any feelings towards violence, and attempted rape, please, lovies, don't read further, I can't bare the thought of triggering anyone. so please, Inbox me if you have any thoughts or any problems with that. Stay safe beloved readers x

 

 

~

 

She had always felt apprehension about going into a mortuary. Some doctor’s, she estimated, were far more brassy about their entrance into the place. But to her, the morgue, was a place where respect was conferred on the dead. It should have been a place of sombre, gut-tightening, remorse. She couldn’t look upon a corpse without feeling melancholia for the life that person had once fulfilled. Just because life was extinct, it did not mean that they were worthless. She held respect for pathologists, to see each cadaver, as just another patient. Perhaps, as she was a nurse, seeing the dead, meant that every single aspect of hope, and the job she carried, had failed both her, and the person on the morgue slab.

Erik had come to fetch her, a staggering three hours later, when he had finished Rosamund’s post-mortem. Conforming her death was loss of blood, via an assault on her persons, with a left handed assailant slitting her throat as he held her from behind. It wasn’t a gang rival killing, nor a mugging gone wrong. It was violent, cold-blooded, pre-meditated, _murder._ And that was what he promised his report would contain. Her father had been contacted, but blithely refused to come and identify her body. That fell down to her shoulders now. Erik walked across, ahead of her, cutting through the room to get to the only occupied morgue slab. As the police coroner had so casually put it, ‘ _It was a quiet night. Place doesn’t liven up til about one.’_ She had given him a look of discernible annoyance and anger as he’d said that _, shrugged_ , and remarked he was going for a smoke break. She followed, feeling terribly feeble, and scared of seeing one of her dearest friends, cold, grey and carved up to her chin, under that cloaking white sheet that shone brilliantly white in the intense light of the place. The walls were a reflective, green tile. The same awful, dank, moss green that had lined the hallway. She can see her jagged, distorted in the tiles. Reflecting back on her. showing her a haunted vision of herself.

Vianne stood, wringing her hands, nervously. Scared of what she knows she’ll now see. Unfortunately, she’d seen many a corpse in her time. But never had one of those been someone she’d known so intimately, and taken from this world in such a heartless manner. Erik pauses, and Vianne watches him, he’d looked sombre, more than was appropriate for the situation, ever since he had come to fetch her. She almost knew Erik inside out, she could see it in him, his brow was drawn, as it was when he was either _aggrieved,_ or _deep_ in _thought_. Usually, when he looked like that, he’d tread, pacing back and forth in the Campus courtyard, treading grass underfoot, his spare hand tucked in his white coat pocket, the other holding his pipe to his mouth as he puffed, and puffed. Stared at the ground below his feet, _And thought._ He looked worried, and she could sense his trepidation was for _her benefit_. His hands went to the sheet, and after he looked at her for a long minute, the longest minute of her life, she saw tears, silver and unshed in his eyes. She swallowed, steeling herself.

He lifted the sheet off. And Vianne’s heart shattered all over again. She cupped her hands to her mouth, to stem her cries, but the sound of her sobs still cracked the shield of her fingers.

There she was. Rose in her final resting place. That lovely, enviable, honey blonde hair, scraped back off her face, in a harsh arrangement she would have _been less_ than tolerably fond of. Her skin is an almost translucent kind of pale, almost as if Vianne can see every blue vein wriggling under her skin, now laying still. Her skin was marble-stone grey, cold to the touch, like one of those beautiful, Grecian statues at the British Museum. This was how Rosamund price would forever be, frozen in time. A beautiful, precious thing who _couldn’t be saved._ The weeping crimson stitched wound running down the middle of her body, between her small, pale breasts, stands out starkly. But that wasn’t the reason Vianne was now sobbing, sounds of her cries, and gasps pleas echo off the cold, sterile walls.

She was crying, because Rosamund had been expecting, in the _family way..._

Vianne, not able to be shaken b _y anything gory. Afraid of nothing, and wary of very little,_ broke down at seeing that. She began to heave, and in her shock, she stumbles across the room, and empties her stomach contents into the enamel surgical tool bowl, stood in the corner. The smell of carbolic acid wafting up her nose, making her feel even queasier. Erik darted across to her, and rubbed her back. Startled at her nauseas reaction from a nurse whom he knew could stomach _almost anything_ medical that crosses her path. He poured her a glass of water, and forced her to sip it, holding it to her lips. She drank little of it. Only to get the acrid, foul sting of regurgitation out of her mouth. She turns back, looking once more at her friend. One hand over her mouth, the other on the stand behind her.

“I don’t need to tell you the cause of death, _do I?”_ Erik asked lowly. And he didn’t, _of course_. She shook her head.

“Vianne, _I am sorry_ , but _I have_ to get a formal identification of her, to release her body to the undertaker to prepare her for burial-“ He began sorrowfully.

She shuts her eyes, and speaks calmly. Opening them again, transfixed by the corpse across the room. “ _It’s her_ …” She remarks with tears falling from her eyes. “Miss Rosamund Eleonora Jane Price..” She tells him. He rubs her shoulder gratefully, taking off his gloves to write it on the medical form to her left. She crossed back to her friend.

Her stomach was swelled to a point that _so evidently_ indicated she had been secretly carrying life. All the more clear to make out from her undernourished body. Rose had always been slim, so a bump would have been harder and harder for her to hide as the weeks went on, even in the early stages. Vianne hadn’t really began to show until _her sixteenth week._

She looked back up, tears dripping from her eyes, across at Erik, who looked stoic as he walked over. As if he were holding them back too. And he was only her doctor, but there was vulgar, bitter breed of sadness in this situation. That someone, some monster, would kill an expectant mother. She laid her hand over roses, cold, pale one. Stiff as wood to hold. She didn’t touch her friend with precise indifference, as she had done with many corpses before, purely for medical purposes. She held onto Roses hand as if she were still here, smiling at them all, light shining in those, _happy,_ blue eyes. the light gleaming off her straight, white teeth in her merry smile.

“How many _weeks_ was she?” Vianne asked with a croaking voice. Erik sombrely answered. Laying his bare hands down on the slab, and clenching his fists on the hard table below them. Drawing the sheet up to protect the ladies modesty, up to her shoulders, he let the covers rest. Still showing her face.

“It’d be my _very rough_ estimate, that she was just at the end of the embryonic period, and just beginning the foetal period. Around _ten weeks_.” He said.

“ _Ten weeks.”_ Vianne repeated. Harriden watched her face very closely, she wouldn’t take her eyes off the evidence of Rose’s baby. Vianne rubbed across her own stomach then. Erik caught her caress.

“Do you know who the _father_ is?” He asked quietly. Vianne reluctantly nods.

“The man I was engaged too. Henry St. Clair.” She gasps out, and more tears come. She looked up to see that Erik looked repulsed, and agitated by hearing such news.

“As insensitive as this remark may seem. I’m _almost relieved_ for her passing. No woman nor child should be indebted to be dependent on _that man_.” Erik stated.

“She was a poor, _poor, stupid_ ,  girl in love.” She remarked. “I know how it feels to be like that… and how it feels when you find out _the truth._ ” Vianne explained, her hands reaching over to pull the cadaver sheet more fully over her head now. 

“I’ll organise her funeral. Even if her father won’t put _a penny_ towards it… I _won’t_ have it be spread around town like foul gossip that Rose had no-one to care after her on this earth. She’ll be laid to rest in the most elegant coffin, and I will have only _sterling words_ spoken of her, and of her child. She’ll have a wonderful, service, and the most elegant flowers I can get my hands on. But not Lilly’s. She hated Lilly’s, ‘ _awful, abominable things. Smelled like death,’_ according to her, she always called _them funeral flowers_..” Vianne remarked with empathy on her tone, and tears still in her eyes as she remembered her friend. Stroking her hand fondly, before that too, she folded under the sheet.

“I’ll see to it her body is released to the coroner tonight. Vianne. _But, now_ , I think you’ve had _plenty enough_ trials for one day. I’ll escort you home. Thomas warned me that leaving you alone could _be perilous_ …” Erik stated, heading for his jacket, hung up on a peg the other side of the room. His medical box was packed, and ready to go. Vianne knew, if she so much as opened her mouth and protested, she’d be very sternly reprimanded, and counteracted. Erik heaved on his coat, and nodded across at her.

“But, you have a home to go too. Erik…You have Julian..” She began. Erik wasn’t married, nor widowed. But he happily lived alone, in comfort. He had a dog he adored, a floppy eared basset hound, called Albert, and though she never remarked on it, nor passed judgement, but Erik Harriden enjoyed companionship with Sir Julian Remmington-Holland, another man of high class. _A Lord._ They were both upstanding, respected men of society, and no one ever remarked on the nature of their _cosmopolitan bond_.

Though Erik appeared charming to women, and there was not a man alive who didn’t like him. Erik Harriden’s heart was _firmly captured_ , but he was reserved about it, though still warm hearted, for he knew that idea wasn’t accepted in any society. It _didn’t matter, not to her_. People should love, who they love, gender be damned. Erik cared after Vianne in a way that made her feel safe. He was her greatest mentor, and the kindest, _and only_ , person she let herself depend on. As a single, struggling, heartbroken mother, all those years ago, Erik, and Julian, whom she both knew intimately, and adored, together, _they were godsends,_ more of fond uncle’s to Juliette and Arthur than friends. He didn’t feel like a friend, he felt _like family_. _And families looked after one another…_

But he merely met her eyes, tilted his head, he grabbed her hand, and held tight. His bronze eyes sparkled.

“I _shan’t hear_ of your protests. What Doctor would do any less for his _bestest, brightest_ student?” He finalises with a kind, warm smile that he was known for.

 

~

 

There is nothing but thick silence on the cab ride home. Night is shrouding, cold and blue over London now. Vianne idly wonders if Thomas had managed to sort out that problem at his foundry, she hoped it wasn’t too drastic-a catastrophe. She trusted his competence to deal with the matter, he could take charge and sort everything. The man she knew two years ago was so tightly held under rein, he could do no such thing. Lucille’s death, tragic as it was, must have been such a release for him. He was never, truly a part of the dark schemes, save for being handled and managed by her. He feared standing up to her, and she saw why. Lucille dealt out only in severity, masqueraded as love.

She knew, the minute she saw Thomas and his sister interact together, at Allerdale. That she’d never be able to encroach on what they had. The bond that had formed, in them both finding solace together out of the horrors of their childhood. Lucille thought she was losing her hold over Thomas, that’s why she lashed out so, violence being the only thing she knew how to successfully inflict. But what she didn’t know, was that from the day Thomas slid a ring on Vianne’s finger, in that chapel in Scotland, the rift between the siblings could do naught but grow wider. Lucille had made it painfully apparent in her life, that she liked only three things. Thomas. Allerdale Hall, and being in charge. She liked everything _just so._ Everything pinned in place, like her scarab beetles, immaculate, and under her control. Everything tagged, named and identified. There was her order, and there was no way of overthrowing it. Thomas saw her as a frail, fragile woman, though strong, she was more susceptible to break than heal. Vianne saw through that instantly. She had Thomas wound tight round her finger, like her little puppet. Now she was gone, Thomas strings had been cut, and his ties to home, he had gratefully severed. He was his own man now, and there was every comfort in that, for him. She saw it.

The carriage comes jolting to a stop, and she looks across, seeing they’d arrived home all before she’d even realised it. The tall, thin stretch of the white marble of her townhouse, stretched up above the street. All the lights within were off, she was relieved to see, and Vianne surmised that since she sent the note to Jeanie telling the staff, they had weeks off, she had stuck to that order. She still gave them pay, of course, she wasn’t cold-hearted, but she had told them to be absent, whilst she had some _‘redecorating_ ’ done. When really, she didn’t trust St. Clair not to hurt her house staff, should they get caught in the crossfire of this sordid mess.

She exited swiftly, key in hand, and Erik behind her, as they strode out of the foggy, darkening night, and into the comfort of home. Only when Vianne slid inside, her heart prickled, because it didn’t feel homely anymore. Cloaked in darkness, it didn’t _feel_ like home, _not to her. Not anymore_. It felt like home where there was a dark, dashing man awaiting on her, in the other room. The last week, with Thomas, in his suite, felt more cosy, and homely to her than two years spent in this grand, mausoleum. She slides her keys into the bowl, on the side table, by the door, and flips on the light switch out of habit. It comes on, and briefly, the place is swamped, made a little cheerier, by the honey gold light that comes on. But before she even took one step, the lights fizzled out with a clicking, _pang_. She sighed. Erik moved behind her, coming in and shutting the door.

“I’ll check to see if there’s any bulbs in the kitchens…whilst I’m about it, I’ll put the kettle on. I surmise, we are both in need of tea.” He pledges. Vianne, stood in the mirror by the parlour door, busily slides the feeble pins out of her straggled hair do. Ruined by the night of activity she’d suffered through. After he speaks, she turns and smiles, looking sidewards at him.

“I do hope I’m not _rudely keeping you_ from Julian’s company..” She enquires. He smiles at her.

“You could not, even if you _wished too_. He is in Yorkshire, staying with the Lord and Countess of Ahern. Shooting, hunting and playing a country gent as I understand it. The only person from whom you’re keeping me tonight, _is Albert_.” He explained. she chuckled.

 “I’ll just go up, and change my gown. But I’ll make us something to eat, as penance, for _my separating you.”_ She tells.

“I didn’t know Heiress’s could _cook?”_ He ribbed.

“I didn’t know Doctors could _boil kettles.”_ She japes back.

Erik chuckles warmly, folding his gloves in his hands. He moved, still in his swathing, fur collared coat, through the foyer, across to her and cups her face in his hands and presses a friendly kiss to her forehead. He then looks down to her stomach, and smiles. And she returns the warm beam. Then he is off, and down the kitchen stairs. He rubbed her shoulder kindly before he went. _“Touché.”_ He congratulates. She chuckles, hearing the whine of the kitchen stairs, as he trod them. That was one thing she detested about living alone. The fact that when the staff retired, the only sounds up around the house, were ones of silence. She hated that. She liked hearing someone she loved, go about their business in the other room. The creak of a floorboard, or the rustle of paper as they sat at their desk.

Lost in idle thoughts, she pulls out the drawer of the foyer dresser, forgetting what she hid there a while ago. She see’s the two portraits, in small, square frames, staring up at her. Their cherubian faces looking searchingly into the camera. She reaches out, and her fingertips stroke the faces through the glass. Arthur had gotten his father’s colouring, with hair as dark as ink. And between them, both boasted a set of eyes so piercing, Vianne knew they had got them from Thomas’s side too. The only feature that marked Juliette as being her daughter, was the bright, sleek locks of pure copper that tumbled from her beautiful head. They were gorgeous children, and she could _barely stand_ it that, as she was with Henry, she had to keep them a secret, as if she were ashamed, which meant her visiting was scarce. She missed them _both so much_ , it was as if she was missing two _of her limbs_.

She took a keen interest in their schooling, at St. Antony’s, and visited often to take them presents, and for walks in the park with Sister Mary. _They knew,_ they were loved. And Vianne found it harder and harder, leaving them there each time. In the early days of being back within London, she had considered giving them up for adoption, or fostering. But in her heart, deep down, she knew they were _hers_ , and they _always_ would be.

She’d laboured so hard, to escape Allerdale, and their Father, that she gave no thought as to whether or not she’d be a competent mother. Eventually, after getting the assistants job to help Harriden, slowly, as she came to trust him more, one day, she opened up, and told him. Afterwards, rambling on and on, about how they didn’t affect her work life, and that she made every care and consideration to see that they had everything they needed. And that she could keep the vows of her profession, because she wasn’t married, it was _forbidden_ for married nurses to work at the London. After she finished spewing out her secrets, and worries. Erik looked up from his work, and the desk opposite, and slid his glasses off. Folded them in his hands, and smiled fondly at her, and then he said. ‘ _I’m gay. Miss James. I live with a man whom I love so dearly, life without loving him seems… damn near impossible. We all have our secrets outside of work, I urge you, don’t fret. So long as my secret is safe with you, yours will always have a haven with me.’_  He’d smiled. ‘ _And, if you are amenable, I would like to meet your children. If they have half their mothers fortitude, then they are surely the sweetest children in all of England, are they not?.’_ After that, Erik came regularly to see Jules and Arthur. He brought them cones of sherbet, and Albert lolloped along as they played in the park.

One memorable occasion she can remember, they were sat in Regents park, on a bench, on a brisk autumn day, watching the two children play with Albert, and running about in the crispy, underfoot, fun of the golden, amber and scarlet dry leaves on the ground. And, as Erik and she sat together, a passer-by, mistook them for a wedded couple, watching their children, and their canine caper about on the emerald grass. Vianne had flushed pink, and blinked those blue doe eyes as she searched for an explanation. _Erik was certainly handsome, but he was much older than her, sadly, these days, closeness in age, to a marriage match, was not a hindering factor._ Erik, to save her embarrassment, scooped her leather gloved hand up in his, kissed it, and spun a _long tale_ to the stranger about how they met on this very park bench, ten years previous, before they courted. The woman, reeling from his expertly crafted story, trotted off, secure in the belief she had just met the most _love-struck_ couple in all of modern London. Erik excused his brazenness, his cheeks too, under his stubble, looked _just as red as hers._

He told her then, something he’d never told anyone, not even _Julian_. Was that he often ached after the thought he’d never have a family of his own. He’d never have a noisy house, crammed full of staff, children and dogs. Because of _‘how he was’_   he’d never know what it was like to be part of a family. That if he, were _‘normal’_ then he’d want a wife exactly like her, because she was the most beautiful, giving, kind-hearted soul he’d ever known, and just being acquaintances and colleagues with her was one of his _finest_ blessings, he’d considered. Vianne had told him then, chiding him for such self-deprecating remarks, and informing him that he would always be a part of her family. Meagre as it was. But the resulting smile on his face told her _he didn’t_ think that _, not one bit._

She traced her finger over both their lovely faces, before she shut the drawer. Wiped away the tear that had beaded in the corner of her eye, and turned about, intending to head up the stairs. She rounded the banister, picked up her skirts, and headed up. Halfway, she hears a noise that was so unusual in its nature, it made her stop. It was the sound of the dining table, scraping against the tiled floor, and the clattering crash of crockery hitting the tiles.

She thinks that it’s maybe Erik being a bit butterfingered. Her kitchen was _quite_ poky. “Erik, Is _anything the matter?”_ She calls, to no response. He was probably sheepishly searching for the broom as she spoke.

She continues up a step, but the flare of fear and horror sits low in her gut, and she wasn’t one to _ignore_ her gut instincts. She doesn’t call his name, but she scurries down the stairs, quickly, and she treads down them carefully.

When she gets there, her heart stops, when she sees Erik, lying face down on the floor. The dining table was jolted out of place, scattered across the floor. Speaking of which, was littered with shards of destroyed crockery from the plate rack, now directly to her left. The kettle was overfilling, bubbling over in the sink. The patter of water continues, hissing and spitting down into the ceramic sink. She crouches, shaking his back, seeing if he was conscious, the corner of the dining table had blood specked on it. She surmises he must’ve fallen and hit his head. She tries to see if there’s a pupillary response when she opens his eyes. “ _Erik?_ ” She asks him, trying to see if he’d respond. She didn’t see that the vacant shadow in the corner of her scullery, was filled with a dark figure. A familiar one, at that.

“I _never did_ like him.” Comes the sneer. “ _Don’t know why_ the London insist on hiring a _bloody_ Sodomite, _anyway_ …” He spits.

Vianne’s head jerks up in the direction of the sudden voice. Her lips gape, and from her position, knelt on the floor, she stays there, merely watching Henry as he stepped forwards, and throws a heavy, clunking object to clash heavily to the floor. It looked, to her, like a discarded cut of bent pipe. And it had blood on the back. Erik must’ve hit his head, falling forwards from the backwards blow _Henry gave._ Vianne recoiled, shrinking to the kitchen wall, by the bottom of the stairs, as Henry stalked closer.

She whimpered, he stepped close, too close for etiquettes sake. She turned her head to the side, able to feel his breath hit her cheeks, and his chest touched into her body, he was stood so close. He was wearing that grin, and the darkened eyes that told her he’d enjoyed a drink or two, before coming here. He was wearing all black, with an undressed collar, and black leather gloves on his hands. A silver watch chain was the only decoration to his lapels. Other than that, his big, thick, black coat covered most of his body. She flinched, not wanting to cry, but she feels close to it, when he fists his hands in her skirts, and the other grips her neck in a chokehold. She, on the other hand, is too terrified to move. It was what he did to her body that she hated the most. Petrifying her to the point of paralysis. _She hated it._

“Hello dear. Did you _miss me?_ Sorry I haven’t called… been _rather busy_ …” He coos into her ear, and she can almost _taste_ the whiskey on his breath. The hand fisted in her skirts, now slid up her back, cupping her ass, and slipping up to clutch the small of her back. Tugging her form closer into his chest. Feeling those perfect, pale breasts crush to his chest. He groaned caressing her body.

“How’s your Sharpe? From what I hear, he declares you’re a _wonderful fuck_. Only _I never_ got the chance to find out, now _did I?”_ He snarls, watching her eyes, wide and terrified. Tendrils of red hair straying in her eyes… He groaned with delight, long and slow, admiring the way her supple body arched into him.

“ _Too busy_ with Rose. I suppose…” She spits back snidely. “As evident by the fact she was expecting _your child_ …” She snaps before can stop herself. His jaw clenched, and his eyes narrowed. Tears fell from hers.

“I admit, _that wasn’t_ to plan. But it was never my idea to _kill_ the stupid bitch…” He explains, squeezing her neck tighter. Shamefully feeling how this situation, them here, now, was serving to make him aroused. He did forget she was such a sweet beauty, from up close. She was ripe to grope too, all curves. _He hated_ the fact that he’d been denied them, where Sharpe had been let loose on them, with no so much _as a thought_ and her thighs parted for him. And they’d been courting for a month, with not so much past the occasional long kiss. Was it any wonder he had to _seek comforts elsewhere?_

“Then _whose was it?”_ She asks, his hold on her throat stung, certainly, but it was loose enough to let her talk freely. But on her seeking answers, his hand grew tighter. As she kept him talking, her fingers scrabbled gently for the dresser that she was almost wedged into. She can feel the edge of a plate, cold slippery and firm under her fingers, she leans over, keeping the conversation going as he hadn’t realised her hand was freely wandering.

“Never _you mind_.” Then he grinned. “You’ll find out, _soon enough_ , I’m taking you to them..” He tells her.

“To who?” She seeks.

“The man who has your lover, and most probably will have _left a few scars_ on his persons, before we get there…” He grinned, triumphantly. Her eyes flared with sudden realisation.

“There _was no_ accident, _was there?_ You just had to get us apart… _What?_ Have you _paid off_ the police now?” She snarls.

“Such _a clever girl_.” He groans patronisingly. “You’d be surprised _how many_ people my associate has under his thumb…” He sneers. She had her fingers around it now. _She had to act,_ without thinking about the consequences, she grabbed the plate, and smashed it across the back of his head. He dropped, and his grip on her grew slack, _she ran_.

She darted up the stairs, but apparently, a thin piece of crockery was not enough to subdue a fully grown man, of Henry’s bulk and stature. When she gets back to the foyer, she can hear him move behind her, he groans, snarling to snatch at her skirts, which she hears rip, as he tried hard to catch her. Which he manages, he grabs her, and in her stumbling to get away, she crashed sideways into the dresser by the front parlour door, sending the drawers shooting forwards, and the body of it falling down to the floor after. Meaning its contents splattered all over the floor, skidding across the tiles. From her sudden collision with the floor, she is winded. But she can’t move fast enough to escape him.

She feels him grab her bicep, and feels the full weight of him atop her. Twisting her round, she is pressed to the floor, facing up under his body. His legs bracket hers, and his hands grab at her shoulders. Keeping her pinned there. Other than being knocked to the floor, she is unhurt. His hand stroked up, harshly over her hair, and he leans down to sniff at her neck, smelling her, her perfume. She knew he always did that when he began to grow aroused. She tried to push him off, but he is too strong, he was suffocating her. Keeping her hands pinned high, he began kissing down her neck as he hissed at her.

 _“Don’t tempt me,_ Vianne, _Do you know_ how _tempted I am right now?_ With you like _this, weak, under me._ It’s taking every ounce of resolve not to lift up these velvet skirts, and _take you, right here_ on the floor. Get my revenge on that _cheating bastard_ you’re _sleeping with… How ironic would that be?_ Just think, that poor sod is being beaten to a pulp as we speak, and here I am, inches away from being able _to fuc_ k his little devotee. _”_ He growls. Chuckling. “I’m almost tempted to do it, and tell him, Just to savour the look on his face when he finds out you’ve been _stuffed full of me.”_ He taunts. Tutting when she tried to shuck him off again. “Ah-ah-ah.” He chides, holding her steady.

She tried, hard, to claw her nails at his face, but he just laughs at her efforts, panting as he sat up, still having flecks of broken, white crockery littering his clothing. He did naught but leaned down, and kissed her, _hard_ , on the mouth. Holding her head so she couldn’t twist out of his way. “ _God, I want you_ , right now, Vianne. “ he murmurs against her neck. His body rutting into her own, she could feel the hard muscles of him, and the evidence of his ardour, pressing down into her thighs. She squirms, bucks her body _, tries anything_ to get him off.

“ _Then again_ … If I did take the time _to bed you_ , we’d be late for our appointment. And he _does so hate_ to be kept waiting. He’s scrupulous about punctuality. As you well know _. Sweetling.”_  He smiles down at her, cunningly.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, you murdering bastard.” She bites out. So he slaps her to keep her quiet. Jerking her head to one side. The noise of hand, hitting cheek rings in the air.

He looked about them, at the destroyed furniture that had happened in the wake of their chase. And he see’s something then, the contents of the top drawer. When he looks up to the wall, he can see two square marks on the wall, faded there from the photos that kept th sunlight from reaching the wallpaper. He sees them now. Lying face down on the tiles, within reach.

He smirks, and she twisted about to see what she was looking at. She cottoned onto his intent instantly.

“ _No, Henry,_ please, _no. I’ll do it,_ I’ll go, please… _No, god! Please don’t!”_ She sobs. He didn’t listen to _a word_ she is rambling out. He grabbed both frames, and turned them over. She clawed at his hands, put to no avail. His eyes sweep over the picture. Taking each one in, in his own time. And then…. He smiles down at her, looking deathly satisfied.

“Sharpes brats, I take it?” He asks her.

She is too scared to speak.

“You come with me. Now. Quietly, obediently. Or I’ll _involve them_ into the bargain, and I cannot guarantee _your safety_ , let _alone theirs..”_ He promises. _She doesn’t want to trust him. She’d been all over that mistake, before._

“ _You’re a monster.”_ She spits coldly. A tear falling from her eye. Scared now, but knowing she’d lay down her very life to protect Thomas, and her children. He tosses the pictures carelessly to the floor. As if they were rubbish to be slung away.

He wrenched her up, onto her feet. Her body felt bruised, and she knew she was in for another long night. She brushes her skirts off, and stands, on wobbling legs. Her hair mussed, thrown in her face. Assaulted by his lust, she had bitemarks bruising on her neck, and her lips are raw from his kisses. But right there, stood, glaring at the man she was sure was Satan incarnate. She’d never known she was capable of such hatred towards a fellow human being. She felt dirty, aching, and so full of blinding, white hot, rage. She couldn’t let him, and this stranger, threaten her family. And if going with him tonight would end it, then she’d _go down fighting_. She’s sure of that.

“I want to go and check on Erik. You gave him a blow to the head. He could have an intracranial haemorrhage. I need to see if he’s still alive, atleast, _please_ , Henry.” She pleads, trying to appeal to his humanity, if she was sure he possessed a singular _scrap of it._

“So you can go and get something from the kitchen with which to _arm yourself?_ What do you take me for?” He growls. For the sake of her own safety, and not wanting another slap. _She doesn’t say anything._

“I didn’t hit him hard. I don’t care if the bastard bleeds to death. I’d be doing the world a favour. He stays as he is.” He finishes tersely. Tugging her to the front door. Stepping over the debris. She winces as his foot carelessly crunches the photo frame of her and Thomas underfoot, and the one of Juliette. He looks back, seeing he hadn’t stepped on Arthurs portrait, he made a point to do so, hearing the glass shatter. That sound hits her heart, and she looks away. Another tear falls.

He fidgets in his pockets, and grips her arm tight once more. That was when his eyes seemed to see, for the first time, the bandage on her left arm. Still dyed pink from Roses blood.

“I almost forgot… How’s the arm?” He sneers, patting his pockets for something.

“Go _to hell_.” She spits out, her eyes blazing with hatred, her hair mussed, loose and free down her shoulders.

“Such a _dirty mouth_ , for a Lady. I bet Sharpe makes good use of that, _does he not?_ Get you on those knees and treat you like the _foul harlot_ you _truly_ are…” He snarls out. She glares.

“Why does it not surprise me that you don’t _know_ anything of how a _gentleman_ pleases his lady..” She jabs at his ego. His grip grew tighter. His eyes burned, and his nostrils flared angrily.

“The only reason you are standing right now is because Rose _tattled_ to Sharpe, the stupid gossip. She opened her big mouth to him, and told him about the Beggars going after you, because of my debts with them. I told them it _was easy money_ to be had knocking you about a bit. Sharpe would pay any sum to keep you safe, Unfortunately though, he killed most of them before they could ransom money off him. Left me in rather a precarious position…” He told her.

“ _Good.”_ She sneers.

His jaw grit, and he must’ve found what he’d been searching for. A small hunting knife. He showed it to her, letting the sparse light glint off the flat blade of it. He Grabbed her arm, and pressed her, tight, into his side. He jutted the knife into her back, just below her kidneys.

“Do you know _how painful_ it is to be stabbed in the soft of your lower back? Because if you so _much as try_ to run, or get help. I will dig this in deep, and twist it. And you’ll be dead before you hit the floor. _Understand me?”_ He asks. She didn’t nod. She merely glared. They stepped out the door. And she’d never been more ready to meet her fate.

 

~

 

 

 

 


	21. Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Retrograde - James Blake

 

 

~

 

The place he’d brought her too, was obviously one that had fallen into disuse several years prior. With the fires of factory industry burning hot, and fast, propelling England into its future, places such as the one they stood in front of now, a traditional old dock warehouse, became obsolete, lost in the swift sweep of progress in mechanisation that gripped the world.

The outside was perilously dark, and in its old age, a toll had obviously taken on the wear of the infrastructure, the wood was rotting on the outside, the roof was spotted with holes that had let the weather inside. Vianne had paused to look up at the place, but Henry reached back and yanked her forwards, to follow him.

He heaved open the warped door, and ushered them both quickly inside. In going into the place, she saw the inside was just as bad as the exterior. The floor was stained, and covered in dust. Crates, filled with forgotten goods, was stacked high, everywhere. The one light came from a clump of bulbs that hung down, burning glaring bright, ahead of them. The air is freezing, it makes every hair on her body prickle, standing straight. And the scent of dust and metallic decay is heavy in the air.

Vianne can see Henry, and this other associate, had brought along some thuggish company. She counted four, but _who knows_ how many more there were secreted around this place. Shrinking behind Henry, as he tugged her along, for the second time tonight, she felt nervous, and scared. Both emotions eroding away at her stomach.

When they get closer, snaking through the swathing paths, created by the numerous boxes, She sees that one of the group lunged forwards, and the smack of fist hitting flesh rings in the air. Thumping up to the dull ceiling. Closer, she observes a chair, with a dark clad figure filling it. Legs bound with thick, heavy rope to the two front legs, and hands knotted to the arms of the chair. Her heart starts to pound, because she _knows_ it’s _her_ Thomas.

She walks faster, picking up her stride, intending to head straight for him. When they come to the clearing where the chair sat, the men in front of him, backed away, allowing her to see the full extent of the damage. Underneath where he is sat, she can see a pool of blood, slowly forming on the floor, by his thigh. There was a strip of fabric, stained crimson, serving as a makeshift tourniquet around the solid column of his thigh. His lip was split, and there was a bruising welt on the left side of his beautiful face. Carved deep on the plane of his cheekbone. _They’d been beating him,_ worsening the state of his _already battered_ body. She rushed forwards, _amazed_ Henry let her go to him.

Before she knows it, unaware of how fast her feet even got her to him, she is knelt in front of her lover. She cups his head, and he opens his eyes, they were as sharp blue as usual, and when he catches sight of her, his hands strain to reach for her, but he can’t manage it because of his bonds. A most glad, smile, tugs at his mouth, she strokes errant strands of that inky hair off his glowing temple. Stuck there with perspiration. She cups the back of his neck, and he mumbles, gladly. His head swimming in and out of reality from the agony of his beating. He feels her elegant, nurturing hands cup his face. _Soft, warm._ He feels her sweet lips speak close to his skin. _She is the most life-like hallucination to come true for him in his misery._ When his eyes crack open, his heart swells, because unlike when he fantasised she was in front of him, this time, _she was in actuality._ His head spun in her nearness. That mussed, sandstone hued hair, the eyes that could rival sapphires, and that pale, worried face just inches from his own. He whimpers, _she was real_. Not like all those times before when she was a conjured memory he yearned for.

 _“Vianne_. He hasn’t hurt you? _Tell me_ he hasn’t _hurt you?”_ He asks quietly. Pleading with her. He wanted so desperately to wrap his arms about her right then, _but he knows he couldn’t_. His hands tried to reach her, and she adheres to him, cupping one of his hands with hers. Filling his clammy, cooling palm with her own hand, in a way that felt more than right to the both of them. Suddenly, as if lifted from a feverous daze, he begins to mumble, rambling, his mouth whispered a pace that seemed to be skipping away, ahead of his brain.

“You shouldn’t have come, you _sh- He’ll_ hurt you. Vianne _he wants_ to hurt you. More than that, he want’s _you dead_. _You have to leave.. Now,_ go, _Leave me…”_ He tries to command. Tears glimmer in his eyes. He didn’t shed a one through all the pain, but the prospect of watching her perish, brings such pain to his body, the wounds he bore grew inconsequential in the face of that dawning thought.

“Leave _you? Willingly? Again?”_ She asks. Her grip on his hand became a clamping vice. “ _Never.”_ She ushers in a whisper. But to him, she sounded the strongest he’d ever heard her be. She embraces him, pressing her head to his shoulder. Outwardly, it looked as though she was just holding him. But when she pressed her lips close to his ear, her motives shone crystal clear.

Her velvet skirts draped over his lap, concealing most, if not _all_ , of his lower half. She reaches for the small item that was luckily still stashed in her pocket, keeping her actions secret, and small, she passes something down over his wrist, pressing the cold item into his hand. “ _Take this. See if you can try to free your hands…”_ She whispers in a plea.

She then cups his face, leaving the weapon in his right hand. His fighting hand. And then she kisses him, slow and deep. Uncaring for the wound on his lip. He sinks into her fiery, passionate kiss. Sighing with short lived bliss, panic tumbling from his lips once more when she pulled away.                                                                                          

He fought, trying to speak up, to warn her. But it appears, his cautionary advice, came too late. From behind him, lurches forwards a podgy, flabby fingered, hand, ending a porky arm, which now held a sharp, small blade out, the metal pressed dangerously against the soft of her throat. Vianne looked up, offended, and then her face fell when she saw she, _unfortunately,_ knew all too well the face of Henry’s associate. Her only relative, leering down, as he pressed a weapon to her throat. Being bound, _unable_ to help her, was the biggest form of torture they could _ever_ inflict on Thomas.

“ _Hector?”_ She speaks In a calm, disjointed voice. Unable to believe the intelligence her eyes were feeding to her brain. Her relative was the cause of all this pain. _Her only family in the world._ Thomas felt her grip grow slack. Wakeman nudges the knife backwards, gesturing, urging her away, out from the arms of her beloved. She slowly straightens, and takes a few small steps backwards. Her eyes don’t leave Hector as she stumbles back. 

 _“Hello_ , niece.” He replies coolly. His eyes calm behind the cold layer of reflective glass of his spectacles. She is too astounded to reply, her skin prickles with gooseflesh. Cold, hard, panic stabbing at every pore. Raising every hair to needle straight on her body. She now stood, out in the open, looking at her relative with a face of utter betrayal. Dark bags under her eyes, she was filthy, exhausted to the bone, but the energy, the aura of hate, that radiated outwards from her, to Hector, was palpable. _Almost touchable_ in the air. 

 _“Left-handed…”_ Thomas interjects in a whisper, pointing out which hand of her uncles held the knife. Her face dawns with realisation. _It was him, not Henry, who’d killed Rose._

“You _, foul,_ bastard.” She manages to stutter in a reedy, thin voice. A hiss.

“ _You’re surprised?_ You decide to take _this wastrel_ to bed, rather than wed _your fiancée_. _My godson_. Of honourable repute, good breeding, and decent money. And I’m supposed to comply? Sigh a meagre _, ‘Yes, dear’_ as if the choice you were making was as banal, as switching _one out for another,_ as if for a warmer coat.” He spat to her.

“That, _wastrel,_ as you so laughingly call him, has more dignity, and love _for me_ in his body, than your, Godson, has in his _little finger_. And as for the remark about good breeding, and repute. _Need I show you_ the scars caused by his foul temper on my persons to prove my point?” She speaks coldly. Hectors lips curled in a sneer.

“I admit, he has _a temper_. This has caused me grief more _than once_. But I thought that would _put you_ in your place… You deserve _no less, not after the strife you caused me two years ago…_ ” He condemns.

Shock, cold, and bitterly real, seeped down into her bones. Realising that Hector _justified her pain_ , each bruise, each broken bone, each battered and welting cut, each open wound. He justified, as her _serving her atonement_ for causing him the bother of helping her escape her first marriage.

“Because I’ve such _an ornamental_ personality… That means I _deserved_ to be tied into a marriage, _and beaten daily_ , as _my penance?”_ She cries in shock.

 _"For starters_ …” Hector growled. “You refused a man who was willing to take you. Even when he knew you were _another mans_ damaged, _used, goods._ ” He ridicules.

“And I thought your godson _was cruel_.” Vianne levels at him. This man she had once considered family, she now discovered, _was a parasite._

“ _Henry.”_ Hector snaps.

A hand fists into her hair, and tugs, wrenching fire from her scalp, causing her to let out a yelp of pain. She is tugged back to a body behind her, and a firm arm clasps around her body. She shudders, noting how he took every precaution to press her rear into his crotch, and his hand holds her tight, by clutching at her chest. One hand curling into, grabbing her breast A snarling male, mouth is lowered to her ear, and yet another knife is pressed against her throat. Hector snipes rudely across from them as Henry gropes her, hungrily, moaning and threatening her, right in front of Thomas’s eyes as he could do naught but watch. Watching Vianne get groped, and assaulted right before his very eyes, as he was helpless to do anything to save her. He squirmed, his arms and muscles strained at his binds. The chair rattled as he tried to move.

“Shooting your mouth off, will do _no good here_. _You little slut_. Why don’t we put you _to the test_ of that word? _Hmmm._ Just _like he did….”_ Henry pointed out vividly, panting into her neck.

His eyes going to find Thomas. Whose mouth was a grim line, and his eyes, were no more than icy pools of cerulean blue. His muscles were trembling with fury. His jaw grit. Hector did nothing, but stood, letting Vianne get served her punishment. She gasps, when the knife leaves her throat, and plunges a neat line down her front, catching the balcony of fabric that hung loose, by the cut of her bust, and ripping down. Exposing her silken, white chemise underneath, that too was torn, allowing a scant glimpse at her lily white décolletage underneath, but not exposing any lower than that. She groaned, fighting his touch, especially when his hand slipped under the cut gown, and cupped her bare breast in his palm. His lips hitting into her neck. His fingers pinching her nipples, which were taut, with the cold of the room about them.

She averted her eyes, feeling _dirty_ , and infected through his groping touch. But Henry used his other hand to grab, and violently twist her head, to look at Thomas, straight in the eyes. Forcing them into each other’s sights.

“ _No.”_ He growled. “ _No. You look_ at him, _you whore_. Look at _your big, powerful_ man now. _Hey?”_   He rasps into her ear. As a particularly vicious smile creeps onto his face. He buries his nose into Vianne’s hair, and moans in bliss as he sniffs her fragrance. Into her neck, he grinned. His hand slithers from her top. To grab hard at her neck, and he speaks, some of her  hair sticking to his lips, being wafted in the path of his hot breath as he sneers, talking to her.

“Seeings as we have both man and wife, here. Why don’t we host a little _truth telling session,_ before we send the pair of you to your graves, _hmm?”_ Henry asked to no-one in particular. Hot tears stung at Vianne’s eyes, and dread, cold, and sickening, like bile, welled in Thomas’s stomach.

 _“No…”_ Vianne pleaded. “No, Henry, _god, No.”_ She begged. Whimpering when he squeezed tighter, her hands went to claw at his arms. Desperately not wanting him to reveal her truth, _Not like this._

“Tell him, Vianne. _Poor sod_ , might feel a bit left out, _Mightn’t he?_ We all know. Why don’t you let him know? _Huh? Go on…”_ He urges sickeningly.

“Tell him _why_ you left Allerdale Hall two years ago..” He demands, and with his grip, and a knife pointed at her throat, she whimpers. She gasps, and when she doesn’t speak, he clutches tighter, choking her. Tears squeeze from her eyes, her stomach coils tight. But when she opens her eyes again. She looks straight at Thomas, knowing that if she didn’t say the words, Henry would slit her throat.

“I-I left. Because…” She sniffled.

“I left, because I was… _pregnant… Thomas…_ ” She sighs. Sagging, after she let the word drop from her lips. It was just a word. Eight little letters, but that word had just turned Thomas’s world on its head.

Ashamed, she raises her eyes, seeing his mouth gaped, and tears dropped from his shocked orbs. His face was pale, gaunt, and he blinked, just taking deep breaths to try and swallow in the enormity of such a confession. He wets his lips, he swallows. But all he has is the taste of his blood on his tongue, and his head is pounding. His heart feels sore, and he feels astonished to find anger, and disbelief are churning in his stomach.

 _She’d had a baby. She’d had **his** baby… without telling him. She’d run away, abandoned him, for that sake. For the sake of a child…_ He was _a father_.

Quietly, his eyes go to the floor, his mind whirring in thought as that revelation rattled from side to side in his head, like ball bearings in a tin can. _He was someone’s father, and he didn’t even know it? Why had she not told him._ These past days spent with her had been nothing short _of bliss_. And now, thinking back, he wonders if she made any effort to tell him? Even once? Or did she plan not too? Henry chuckles from behind Vianne.

“Where..” Comes the only word from between his cracked lips. His mind reeling still. He locks eyes with her, and she can see his eyes churned with sadness, hurt, and incredulity.

“ _Oh, no, no, no._ I’m afraid confessional _isn’t over yet..”_ Henry cackles. Having fun, dancing around in the ruins if their painful misery. “Don’t you feel _so much, lighter_ , Vianne my _darling? No?_  Now he knows, when you found out what they wanted to do, what Lucille wanted him _to do_ with you, once you’d given him children. She wanted your brats for herself, and when they no longer needed you, she was going to force her cowardly brother to slit your throat. And then brother, sister, and your children would be raised as Sharpes, and the world wouldn’t even have mourned you. You’d be another memory, buried in secret in that god awful house _Isn’t that right_ , my love?” Henry asked his ex, whose eyes brimmed over with tears. It was Thomas who spoke next.

“How do you _know that?”_ He asked quietly. Ashamed.

“A letter, Vianne wrote to her Uncle. _Did I quote it right?”_ Henry mocks. Thomas glared.

 

He can remember Lucille telling him that, one conversation they’d had. _Alone._ Up in his attic workshop. Vianne was in the library, secretly hiding her morning sickness under the guise of reading. _They’d thought,_ only, _she wasn’t._ She idly made herself a cup of tea, and had just carried one up the stairs, and through the ajar door, catches wind of the conversation that would change her life forever. Possibly even, _saving it._ She had listened to Lucille, complaining in her cold way, that something had to be done about the new Bride. She’d all in all, told Thomas to do the most despicable thing. _‘Go to her. Got to her, deep, brother. Go and find your release inside her. Then when you’ve given us one of her children, we can finally get rid of her. That interfering brat, I want her out of this house. I don’t want her in your bed. She needs to learn her place. Then, once she ceases being useful, I want to watch you slit her throat. Prove to me she means less to you as a lover, than I. If you can manage that…’_  She’d spat _. ‘We’d raise the child as our own. As a Sharpe. To make up for that twisted, warped one we lost before. They’ll be healthy, and we can be a family again. No more brides. No more. We’ll have her money. We can be here for eternity. Just us.’_  She’d demanded. Vianne didn’t stay to hear Thomas’s response. His coldness of character, and distance, aswell as the fleeting bouts of passion, only at night, releasing inside her whenever he had a chance when they were abed, now it _all made_ sense. _Her own husband, and the father of the child she now carried, wanted to kill her._

She’d raced down the stairs, dropping the full teacup on the rug, on the way past so it made as little noise as possible, and she ventured out into the snow. Retching, heaving, unable to alleviate her sickness, her stomach was empty from the nausea that plagued her all morning, she clapped a hand over her mouth, trying not to let her noises indicate that she’d heard them. Still sobbing, she threw open the door, the stinging snow, and cold wind burned her cheeks. Drying the salty paths of tears on her pale face. She wails, running away from the house. She treads step after step in the bitter cold. Hearing nothing but crunching snow, as she tried to get away from Allerdale. But she can’t _get far_. The snow is too bitter. She comes to the edge, of a frozen, deep pond. Cracked with ice, she can see the navy blue of the water peeking beneath the cracks in the ice. Wrapping her flimsy shawl about herself tighter, so tight her knuckles cracked, turning white. She gently touched one foot out, nudging a heavy shard of ice, watching it bob on the water. She took a deep breath, assured that no-one would miss her, she takes a further step forwards.

She wonders idly if Thomas and Lucille _would bother_ wanting to give her a body a proper burial, or just claim it was a _‘tragic accident.’_  She can almost hear the Sharpe woman’s cold voice, say with that cool disinterest, callously, ‘ _So tragic. She went for a walk one day, in the snow. She didn’t see where the lake began, and the shore ended. So, very, tragic.’_  She’d crow stoically. Vianne clutches her hands about her middle, tears falling fast, she bites her lip. Knowing her next step would plunge her in the icy waters, the pain would be unfathomable. The shock of the cold would be what kills her first, she knows that. Like a thousand knives of ice tearing into her body, but once the water began to fill her lungs, she’d drift away, and sink down, to join the useless fodder at the bottom of the pond. She’d be just another victim of Allerdale hall, and its murderous owners. _One more step…. One more, and this will be over… the child and the wife that shouldn’t have been will be out of his hands for good, maybe then he’ll be happy…_ He brain remarks.

Crying, she doesn’t hear the footfalls running for her in the snow. She feels her body lurch forwards. But strong hands about her waist grip her tight, pulling her to land. She gasps, slumping into the frame of her husband behind her, she sags, limp, in his hold. Seeing him stood, just as uncovered in dress, not donning a coat, in the snow behind her, His inky hair, being battered by the wind. His eyes shocked, seeing her crying face. Her legs wobbled, and before she can collapse, kneeling into the snow. He holds her upright in his arms.

“Vianne, _what on earth?_ You could’ve fallen in, had I not been here. This pond _is reckless_ when in weather such as this, I’ve warned you time, _and time again_. _Stay near_ the house, at _all times_ …” He encourages sternly.

 _“No_. can’t have me going far, _can you?  You and Lucille…_ You need me healthy, need me to be… _propagative”_ She speaks blandly. Not meeting his eyes. She wanted to tell him, then and there, that in eight months, he’d have part of his horrid plan fulfilled. But something stops her, a little pang of reason. One that told her, she’d be sat, expectant and fearful, like a Turkey in December. Waiting, for the day she ceased fulfilling her use, then she’d be put out to pasture. Her child would be taken away, and she’d be killed by the one man she adored more than anything on god’s green earth. She envied Lucille. She had such _a hold_ on him. Her love for Thomas, would never hope to match, nor rival _hers_. _She was jealous. Hurt, so hurt she wanted to throw things, scream, kick, claw his eyes out in thinking they’d be laughing at her behind her back as they coupled. Stupid, stupid Vianne,_ stupid, priggish, girl _she has no idea._ Thinking their wedded, private, intimacy was strictly between them, but, to find he had all that, and more, with another woman. Was it any wonder she wanted to plummet into an icy pond? She wonders if her heart stopped beating, than maybe the pain would stop. _She just wanted it to stop…_

She was looking back up at the awful, jagged, ruin of a house, that reared up, sticking up, rising out of the snow like an abscess. A black, rotting tooth, perched on the icy landscape. In looking up at the gothic place, she is not in the least bit surprised, to see the crimson clad, dark haired figure, stood by the front door, eyeing them, through the slow flurry of snow that gently beaded down from the cloudy heavens. _She was always watching on from the shadows. Watching her own little puppets dance._

“ _What?”_ Thomas asked, bewildered. Sincerity centre-stage in his eyes. He stroked his hands down her arms, finding her hands and squeezing them. “Are you crying?” He asks, thumbing away a bitter tear.

“The wind. It makes my eyes water..” She lies. Hugging in on herself. Not wanting to be near him.

“We need to get _you inside_. Your hands are _ice_. Come, let us get you warmed…” He soothes.

Vianne doesn’t look at him, _she can’t._ In her rage of discovering their sordid little plan, she daggers a look across at Lucille, instead, as her husband moves to her side, and begins to guide her inside. She steps with him, feels his hands about her, his body next to hers, but she doesn’t _feel_ any of it. She is _numb. Unfeeling_. Like a machine, she doesn’t take any of it in. She is bland, unappealing, boring. Not even enticing enough to inspire lust in her own husband. She felt dazed, and removed from her body. All she does feel, is cold and pain. When they come to the doors, Lucille had vanished, leaving man and wife alone. Thomas guides his wife inside, Lucille’s plan rattling round in his head. When he told her he would have no part in such a foul scheme, and stormed off. He heard his sister head to her own quarters in solitude. But not before she’d managed to threaten him. _‘You can’t watch after her, forever, brother dear. Be careful she doesn’t come to the grizzly end of an accident around Allerdale. After all, it’s such a, perilous, house. She could fall down the stairs. Fall asleep in the bath and drown. Or fall from the landing. Anything could happen to her.’_ Lucille had threatened. Thomas had turned his back on her, going to find his wife. And check on her. Wary that his sister was incensed. _And that didn’t bode well for anyone…_

 

“I wouldn’t have let her lay a finger on you, Vianne. Please believe me. I wouldn’t have let her harm our baby. Because its yours, and mine, and I would have loved them _with everything_ I had…” Thomas cried. His voice hoarse with emotion, it was choking him. Strangling him.

“I _didn’t know_ that then.” Vianne sobbed back. Her voice made his heart break. She was sobbing too, now.

“As far as I knew, Thomas. You wanted _no more_ from me, than a baby you and Lucille could _call your own,_ whilst I _rotted away to nothing_ in the cellar. _I had to get away_. I couldn’t stand it. I was, _so angry,_ with _you_. I wanted to scream. To break things. To have such, _rage_ , bubbling inside me, for what the both of you did to me, behind my back. The clandestine secrets, the death, the lies. I _couldn’t stand it._ I was _so hurt,_ I could barely let you _touch me_ … and I knew it _pained me so_ because of _how much,_ I _loved,_ and _still_ love you..” Vianne explained. Her voice strained. Tears glistened down her lovers face as he heard that.

 _“God, it’s you_ , Vianne." He sobs. 

"It’s _only ever_ been _you_ whose been right for me. You deserve someone better than me. _I don’t deny that._ But I _can’t_ let go of you. You _were to be mine_ from the minute I saw you, _we both_ knew that. I messed up because I am no more than a stupid, stupid man. I _was a coward, I admit._ But my love for you, though I never said, was the best thing that ever happened to me… You were _the best thing_ I’d _ever had._ Vianne.” He cries out sincerely.

They both looked at one another, Thomas ached to tear her away from the harm she’d come to in Henry’s arms. But he couldn’t. he wanted to go across there, and tell her, take her in his arms, and say she had all the courage in the world, to do what she did. And he was thankful. So very thankful, that she had taken the initiative and the guts to leave first. _To protect his child with all she had_. Because, to him, _she and they, were worth more than him put together._ Their safety was worth _far more_ than his life. And he was glad she saw the value in that. Because had he the whole world over, and their life over again _, he’d have it no other way._

“ _You see_ …” Henry snaps, interrupting, jolting Thomas out of his memories that led them to this _awful, horrid, moment_ they were sharing.

“I say that this isn’t the last revelation. Because, _it isn’t._ Haven’t go got something to tell our dear Vianne, Thomas? The truth, maybe, of how your murdering sibling, really, died?” Henry encouraged.

Vianne looked over at Thomas now, wearing the look of incredulity he had not seconds previous, given her. She stopped squirming in St. Clair’s gripping hold. She watched Thomas avert his eyes now, shame overtook his face. And he didn’t do anything but meet Vianne’s eyes again – after Hector gave him some solid encouragement, holding the knife back in front of his throat – He looked across at Henry in the most foul way, that the lout surely deserved. When he spoke, Vianne had never heard his voice _so quiet._

“How _did Lucille die_ , Thomas? Delight us?” Henry urges.

“She didn’t kill herself.” Thomas spoke. Looking directly at Vianne. “ _I_ killed her.” He spoke simply.

Vianne blinks, recoiling. She wants to be more hurt, and shocked than she is. But deep down, a rational part of her knows, awful as it was, that it _had to be done._

Lucille was poisoning the Sharpe family, and Thomas had to put a stop to it in _the only way_ that he knew how. _The only way that would work._ Which meant, Lucille had to die, and by his own hand too. Their love, was the monster he’d made, and sought, and he had to be the one to _slay it dead._

“Not only a wastrel, _but a murderer_ , too.” Henry sneered. Proverbially twisting a knife in the wound. “How does it feel knowing you’ve let a murderer into your home, _Vianne? Hmm?_ The father of your grubby children is _a killer…_ How will they grow up happy knowing their father is a butcher? Think of their _horrid little nightmares…the poor little lambs...”_ Henry coos into Vianne’s ear. Thomas was _desperately vying_ for her to look at him. But she’d twisted her face away. Henry gripped her chin, and wrenched her head round, bringing her closer, almost so they could touch, shoving her face to look at Thomas.

“Look at the man you’ve chosen. Vianne. _This, is_ the _true nature_ of the man you love. _An incestuous, murdering, bastard_. How about that… _How_ can you love _someone like him_ , after what _he’s done to you?…”_ Henry sneers.

Thomas’s head drops into his lap, and he throws Vianne out of his hold, she falls to the floor, having been shoved there. She picks herself up, crying. Weary to the bone, but very certain about one thing. Henry brings the knife to her throat again. His favourite move. Cowards always attack from behind.

 _“Go on_ ….” He orders. Gritting his teeth. One hand fisted in her hair. Thomas raised his eyes, and looked at her. She’d probably never speak to him again. She could scorn him, hate him, refuse him, and his love for her, and he wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. Henry delighted hearing her whimper as the knife bit into her throat, pulling a thin line of red, he watched a bead of blood drip down her throat, rolling away over her sternum. She held back more tears, and those blue eyes are looking across at Thomas Sharpe, as lovingly as the day she first saw him.

She saw him whole now, scars, secrets and all. And _even after all that…_ _all the pain_ they’d caused each other…

“In my heart, he _was always mine, just as I am entirely his_.” Vianne sighs simply. Swallowing.

Thomas looked at her then, and he looked almost like he _didn’t believe her,_ yet, _he was so glad he did._

He hadn’t lost any love for her, if anything, it had _deepened_ in a way he never thought possible. And hers, _hadn’t faltered one bit_. Lucille was sick, and she was beyond  the help of any healing. He had to do what he did. She would _never_ thank him for it, she wasn’t callous, but _she knew_ , absurd as it sounds, that _it was the right thing,_ to do. And no one could have been more right to do it, than him. She reached forwards and placed her hand in his, holding it under the chair. Henry scoffed at the sight of the sickening, love-drunk, idiots.

Hector, who stood off to the side-lines, watching Henry have his sordid fun, had, apparently, _grown bored_ of hearing of the tragedies of Thomas Sharpe, and Vianne Earnest-James’s love story. He snapped at Henry.

“When you’ve finished being idiotic.. we haven’t _much time._ We need to _get this over with_. I’ve been waiting for this, for _thirty two years,_ And remember, the money is split _70/30. We agreed._ Frame Sharpe _for her_ death…and I finally get my hands on the money my brother denied me, and his estate.” Hector bristled, his flabby face jerking as he spoke, showing his displeasure. Henry threw the knife away with particular glee. Hearing it clang, and clatter off in the distance. Vianne glared, daring him to speak so callously, and casually about ending her life. Thomas’s knee nudged her, and when she look back, she saw his bindings were seconds away from being frayed loose due to the knife she’d given him.

 _“Actually…”_ Henry remarked, smirking. The man seemed giddy. Unnaturally so. Thomas was sickened to think other people’s pain caused him _this much_ pleasure. Thomas, Vianne and Hector seemed to watch him fiddle with his pockets, and as he brought out a gun, Vianne clutched harder onto Thomas. Yet, St. Clair loaded it with careful efficiency, indicating he was in _no rush_. He committed his atrocities at his own pace, as became very evident… by the fact he loaded the gun, and pointed it _towards Vianne._

“I thought I told you, to do it, with _A KNIFE!”_  Wakeman shouted, “Bullets leave a trace, you fool. I knew I took a gamble involving you, _you pathetic boy.”_ becoming incensed at his idiotic companion. Henry looked across at him. Calmly. And then he scrunched his nose up, in obvious discrepancy.

“I disagree…” Was all he said. Then there came a sudden, sharp bang as he discharged a bullet…

Vianne’s body dropped like a stone, and she screwed her eyes shut. Falling, when she opened them, she registered her head was ringing from having hit the floor. Thomas had sprung in front of her, knocking her to the ground, having cut his ropes, in the effort to spare her from the path of a bullet. She looked up, her head swimming in and out. And when she gathers her breath, she registers that she hadn’t been shot, and he was looking down at her, with a bloodless, gaunt face. She rose up, cupping him close, before he blinked down at her, shaking in pain, but other than that… None of them had been shot.

They twisted around, looking up from the grubby floor. To see, across from them, Hector Wakeman stood, but not for much longer. There was a bullet wound, sprouting crimson blood from his neck, like a macabre fountain. He thuds to his knees, and Vianne’s eyes go wide, she lurches forwards on her knees, her reflex was to go to him. But then, she stills. Thomas’s arms reach to grab her, clutch her close, And they watch for a second. Taking in the sight of him, as he slowly bled to death.  Henry lowered his smoking gun, sighing with relief.

“ _Thank Christ_ for that. I was worried you’d _talk and talk on and on_ at me for the rest of my life, Hector. _Stupid old fool._ Did you really think I could have 30% of almost half a million? _You doddery idiot_ , plus, you killed Rose, and my child. And, if _it’s only you_ standing in my way. I’ve no trouble getting rid of you. Getting rid of her would _be such a waste._ I was going to have a bit of ‘ _fun’_ with her first…” Henry leers at Vianne.

“Over _my dead_ body..” Thomas bites in warning. Vianne clutches at him, trying to keep him quiet. But she knows she couldn’t when her safety was threatened.

“So _be it,_ Sharpe…” He smiles, aiming the gun at Thomas now. Vianne stays where she is, shielding her lover from harm. spreading her arm out in front of him. She levels with Henry. She snaps into action.

“No. no. no-Let me _talk to him_ , before he dies…” She asks him coolly, He glares, showing .. “ _You don’t_ use that gun on Thomas, and I will sign the _trust over, no fuss_ , half a million, all in your name…” She bargains. Henry lowers the gun, and smiles. Nodding, he lets her cross to Wakeman. Who, in his dying moments, reaches up for her. She glares, icily down at him. His eyes were bugged, one flabby hand clutching at his neck, trying to stem the blood, keep in in his body and prolong his life for a precious few more seconds. Every nursing impulse of hers, she has to fight, _he didn’t deserve saving._ Not after what he’d done to Thomas, and her, and Rose, and her unborn child. He gurgles, spluttering. And she can’t help think of the irony of him bleeding to death.

“ _Why so scared?_ This is _exactly_ the type of death you gave to Rose, Hector. It’s _Slow. It’s Painful_. And you gave no care to the fact she was carrying Henry’s child… _Oh_ , and I’ve a little bit of news for you, before the panic sets in…” She remarks, she kneels, swatting away his hand as he reaches for her. He tries to speak, but she doesn’t care. She gets down, by his side, and says something lowly into his ear. When she finished, she rises to her feet again. He makes almost inhuman sounds of agony, he tries to reach for her, but, undeterred she rises to her feet again. He tries to claw at her skirts, but she moves away. Muttering _‘No’s’_ and pleas at her. She ignored them.

“What did you tell him?” Henry asks. Ready to aim the gun at her again. Vianne smiled with confidence that made Thomas curious, and Henry angry.

“I told him _the truth_ about my Father’s money.” She insisted.

Henry, enraged, had opened his mouth to speak, the gun wavered in her direction, but, he was swiftly interrupted. Many pairs of booted feet thumped through the warehouse, and suddenly, the thugs they’d hired, hiding in the shadows until they were needed, or paid. Either one was fine. They were all surrounded by armed men, clad in tweed suits, bowler hats, and a fancy east-end getup. All of them had guns, or knifes in hand. And quickly, the place was overrun, their new company outnumbering them ten to one. As they poured in, they shout at Henry, Vianne and Thomas to get on their knees. Which they do, hands behind their heads, showing they were unarmed.

Shouts deafening up to the roof. Henry’s gun is wrenched from his hand, and Thomas throws her knife away, it skitters across the floor. In the quietening din, one man steps forwards. He was young, with eyes that were a touch too far apart, a cheeky smile, stuffed with a woodbine, and a russet bowler hat on his head. He too wore a red jacket, and taupe tweed trousers. A proper East-End boy if ever they’d seen one. He flicked the cigarette away, jauntily, and expelled the breath. Smiling when he caught sight of Vianne. Thomas turned, panicked to her, worried at the smile the man was giving her, and if there was malicious intent behind it. But his eyes soften, and she smiles when she sees him too, sighing in relief. He sharply orders the two men surrounding her, to instantly back off.

 _“Oh, Davey_. _Thank-god_. I was worried you wouldn’t get my note.” She remarks. The young man saunters forwards and gives her his own hand, helping her to her feet, as he took off his hat. She was relieved to see there was no hidden flasks up there, this time. _Maybe he’d kicked the habit, after all._

“No trouble at all _, for you._ Nurse James.” Davey, _Robins,_ spoke kindly. Thomas and Henry were gawping at her, Their hands still on their heads, on their knees on the hard concrete floor. Thomas found it incredible to believe that one of her secret, most powerful allies, had come about through _her nursing them._

“If me and my associate may take our leave of you know. Only we’ve had a _rather trying,_ day.” Vianne explained. Davey Robins looked about, eyeing Thomas. And grimacing when he saw Henry, who, for the first time in her life, Vianne saw he looked _scared._ And for a man who spent so much time revelling in other people’s fear, seeing him apprehensive, _was a pleasure._

“Thanks for tippin’ us off about him. Nursey. We’ve been after him for _a long while_ now. He owes the blind beggars a hefty sum of money, which he hasn’t been prepared to pay. We have _a system_ for people who don’t give us what they owe. _Don' we? Lads…”_  He asked, a few people around them chuckled darkly. Henry’s eyes darted about in fear.

 _“Blind beggars gang?_ You’re the ones who sent your colleagues _to burn her…”_ Thomas speaks in a growl before Vianne could stop him. He was so hot-headed, it was the one affliction she _couldn’t save_ him from.

“You must be _Thomas Sharpe_. She told me about ya.’ let him up lads. _Let a man up…”_  Davey ordered. Thomas staggered to his feet, wincing at the wound on his leg. His face had stopped ringing, his thigh was the worst wound he’d suffered through. Robins saw how Thomas flinched. ” _Bloody hell_. Someone’s done a number _on ya, mate_ …” What’s more he saw the blood as evidence of his beating. His face was cut in numerous places, and his lip was bleeding. He comes to his feet, his back sagging, limping, as he tried to stand on his injury. Vianne goes to his side, and her hands go to touch his waist as he stood. He tucks an arm about her, relaxed a little, now he’d found these men were friends, _not foes._

“ _And, yeah_. It was a couple of members of the blind beggars that hurt her. But _they was idiots._ They didn’t do it under my permission, or order, _see?_ And that’s not right. They was wanting to take over my spot. _So_ , I need _to thank you_ , Mr Sharpe. For taking them off me hands. Cause’ if you hadn’t of killed em’, _I would_ have had to do it. You saved me a lot of _trouble n’ strife, you did. Plus,_ I couldn’t let anyone hurt Nurse James. She ‘elped me through a tough time, she did. She helped me stay off the drink, and cause o’ that. Last week, I lived to see my daughter born…” He flattered. Vianne blushed, cheeks pinkening a little.

Henry began to protest, but one of the men turned, and the both of them flinched as they shot him in the foot. Effectively immobilising him where he knelt. He clutched, howling, at his foot. Trying to reach for Thomas and Vianne, but they looked over to Davey Robins. Their unexpected saviour.

“You’re a diamond, Nurse. A Proper hero, you are. I can’t thank you enough. Now. You may want to get out of ‘ere. What we’re about to do to him, is unsavoury to be done in the presence of a lady. There’s a cab waitin’ on ya at the end of the street. My treat. I’d get gone if I was you, it’s a dodgy area round here, at night. And if you ever need anything on our side of the river, the Blind Beggars in in your debt, Nurse.” Davey smiles.

“Thankyou. Mr Robins. Give your daughter a kiss for me.” Vianne smiles. Leaning over to kiss the man on the cheek. “And stay off the booze, or we’ll have words, you and I…” She warns. He tipped his hat to her.

Vianne smiled, helping Thomas stagger off, telling him to put his weight on her as they walked. They got a few steps away, before she turned back, and called for Davey. He came over, letting his associates get in the first few punches. She’d learnt never to get on the bad side of an East-End gang. Henry, however, _had not_. He’d underestimated her, _which was his fatal mistake._

“He _doesn’t deserve it,_ and I’ve no right to ask, but… whatever the end is, _make it quick.”_  Vianne asks, flickering her eyes over to Henry, who looked devastatingly scared. Davey considered it with a wry shrug. Stating he’d do anything for Nurse James. She smiles, and her and Thomas depart as swiftly as they are able. Or atleast, they get out into the street before the _screams begin._

She helped Thomas limp out onto the street, he groans with every step, walking on his injured leg. He winces, and then he stops them. she turns to him concerned, worried he was going to faint from loss of blood. He doesn't. he brings them to a stop, and in the middle of a dark, dangerous, deserted street, he cups her face in his hands, and having no care for the cut on his lip, he kisses her. He kisses her harder than he has ever done before.

"I think you're a _marvel among women_ , Vianne James." He tells her, proudly.

 

 

~

 

 

When they get back home, to her house on Great Russell street, the morning sun, barely shining through the windows, across the street, give her foyer a dark, cold light that felt foreign in her once happy home. Thomas blanches at the sight of blood on the walls, from her earlier altercation with Henry, her palms were cut to strips from the plate she smashed on his head. The dresser was heaped to the floor, spilled across the rug, as were its contents. She tugs him past those, ignoring them. She heads for the kitchen stairs, seeing that the kitchen was empty, but still messy, and cluttered. Davey had gotten Erik to the hospital like she’d asked. She suspected a concussion, and asked Sister Evangeline to send her reports of his progress. She could patch her and Thomas’s wounds up here, for now. Were they more severe, she’d have considered the London, now that Henry and Hector were dead, the shadow of their threat leaves her not watching over her shoulder every second.

She held him down the stairs, and shoves the debris aside. The both of them were so tired, and hurt, they could barely speak. He sits at the dining table, just watching her. Tired to the bone, his eyes follow where she goes. She brews them tea, apologetically serves them in chipped china, as it was ruined when Erik crashed into the dresser. It is a strong brew, and the heat makes his teeth ache. He then watches her flit around the cupboards, and turn on the stove, and after he watches her chop and butter bread. He watches her lay slabs of cheese on it, and place it under the ovens heat. In no time at all, they are enjoying golden squares, of toast, bubbling with sweet, salty melted cheese, gooey and delicious. They eat like they hadn’t eaten for years. And he is the first to break the silence.

“ _What- what_ happened to _our baby?”_ He asks in a quiet voice. “ _Did they-“_ He begins. His brain couldn’t force his mouth to form the words, _survive._ He lets the insinuation of it hang on the air. Ashamed, she looked down, before she meets his eyes. She sets her teacup down, and plucks at the gaping chip in its rim. Like she was _picking_ at her one of her own wounds...

“ _They lived_? They were _healthy?…_ ” He chases. She meets his eyes, and he can see her tears. She bites her lip in trepidation.

“They _were twins_.” She tells him. He looked absolutely astounded, he reaches for her hand, across the table, and grasps it, stunned. _Happily so_. His eyes were _jovial, curious. Needing_ to hear _more._

“ _Two_ of them?” He asks her, unable to believe it. _Now, not only_ was he a father, but he _was a father of two children. Two of their, perfect, untainted, wonderful children._

“One boy. One girl.” She tells him. “And, they’re _perfect.”_ She informs him. What mother would say less about her own children. Thomas smiled, tears in his eyes. He didn’t deserve her, let alone two of her, of their, glorious children. He knew this well. _He’d spend the rest of his life telling her this fact, if she’d let him_. He wasn’t going to talk about Lucille, she was dead, and he didn’t miss her. He wanted to devote more time hearing about _his_ happy family now…

“I think, we need to go upstairs, take off these _wretched, dirty_ , clothes, Clean our wounds. And then, I don’t know about you, but _I’d merrily sleep_ for about a _thousand years_..” He sighs. She laughs, chuckling as she clutched his hand. Relieved he wasn’t mad at her. She was terrified he would be, it was a lot off her mind to find he just wanted, _to know_ , about the children she’d run away to save. For now, she is happier than she can remember being, _ever._

“And… then. Vianne.. would you, humour me…. Will you tell me about my children?” He asks her. She holds his hand. Bites her lip, leans over and kisses him solidly. His lips tasted like butter, and tea. When she pulled away. There are tears in her eyes.

“ _Yes, Thomas._ I will.” She cries. So very in love. She knew she owed him that much, _atleast._

 

~

 

 


	22. Comfortable Lovers (at last)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Bloodstream - Stateless

 

 

~

 

The rain that fell on London that day was heavy. _So heavy_ was it, in fact, that when both Thomas and Vianne, lay slumbering, in her bed, taking some well-deserved time to recuperate, they can hear the _rain patter incessantly_ on the rooftiles. Drumming on the roof, and providing a gentle, easy sound to accompany their silence. But it _wasn’t an awkward silence_ that engulfed the both of them, it was _an intimate one._ Thomas had never had a better night’s rest in _all his life_. Her boudoir is warm, pleasantly so, there is a fire crackling low in the hearth, and outside was dark, and cloudy with the sky so full of chowder grey clouds. And the air is scented, oddly, of vanilla, the musk that clung to her crisp bedsheets, aswell as her perfume lingering there too. Pressed upon every snowy pillow. When he takes a deep, long exhale, the scent of vanilla, Vianne, and French perfume fills his senses. And he _smiles so_ in his rest at that.

She had wanted to dress the deep, gashing wound on his thigh, which ultimately had led to his now being naked. His modesty was kindly preserved by a bedsheet, as she, in her silken dressing gown, kneels by the side of the bed, and stitches him up. Not for the first time, but definitely, _she hopes_ , for _the last._ He grins down at her whilst she works, merrily watching her face pulled in such concentration as she threads another stitch through his flesh. After she tends to him, they can barely devote the time to keeping a conversation alive, nor their eyes open. She heaps onto the bed beside him, and he spares enough energy to pull the sheets over them, he folds her into his chest, and by the time their heads meet their pillows, they are both _dead asleep_.

He wakes slowly, a many number of hours later, warm, cosy, naked and tangled in his lovers bedsheets. His face stinging where she’d cleaned his cuts some time prior to their rest. He can still hear the steady falling of rain dropping on the rooftiles above, he can hear it tap and spit down the window pane. He can’t feel her next to him, so he shuts his eyes and continues to rest. Then, he hears the bedroom door creak, and soft pads tread the carpet. His eyes are hooded, but open again, when he feels the mattress dip to his left. When he does peek his eyes open, he sees her, next to him. Her body so pale, lily white skin, and an ice white silk nightdress swathing her form, makes her flame coloured hair stand out all the more. Loose, and curled down her back, it is coiled and mussed from having met so long with her pillow. _She is a truly glorious sight, the mother of his children._

She sat on the bed, beside him. And that’s when he noticed the small, silver, antique jewellery chest. When she opened it, he saw it was lined with crimson velvet. She reaches inside, and she idly fidgets with its comforts. She looks enraptured by its contents _. He thinks it sad that her old life stay contained, hidden in boxes. But then he delights in knowing it needn’t any longer._

“They _were born_ on a rainy day…” She begins. He nestles his head back on the pillow, and beams sleepily, over at her. He can tell this would be a story worth staying awake for. Because it was the one he’d asked, desperately, to hear. She shuffles closer to him, laying on her side, smiling, folding her knees up, tucking her body onto the bed near him as she relayed the tale. She was sat up, with her elbow bent, her hand cupping her cheekbone as she rested, on her side, facing him, as she traced a fingertip over the embroidered initials of her maiden name, twirled on her pillow.

“Hector, _seconded_ me to a sanitorium in Kent. _Oakhampton_ , it was called. Even hearing the name again, makes me _shudder...”_ She winces, closing her eyes. But he wanted to hear this. So she opens them, and soldiers on., for him. The man who’d come to find her again. “I was, confined, to _that awful,_ ruin of a place, for seven months. He said I wasn’t to risk the dangers of remaining in town, unwed, and expecting. _No husband_ on my arm, no _wedding ring_ on my finger.” She added wryly. There came a glimmer in his eyes, as she said that. She could read that gleam. That gleam said _‘Vianne, my love, I could change that in a heartbeat.’_

“Seven months, in that _drafty, mad, hellhole_. I wonder _how_ I didn’t _go entirely mad._  Me, incarcerated in a crumbling, cottage hospital, with an ailing Duchess, several hysteric Countesses, and a grieving, wailing, Marchioness.” She explained with humour in her voice. “I don’t remember _all that_ much about being pregnant in all honesty. I remember varicose veins, my bad cases of heartburn. Nausea, and sickness. But, I don’t remember, _god help me,_ looking _forward_ to meeting the baby I fought _so hard_ to keep. The wailing marchioness was a champion craftswoman, I remember she knitted enough baby clothes to keep a small _army_ of babies warm, and merrily clad. I didn’t have a stitch for them to wear. I didn’t want to think of them. I tried to ignore it. I know that must make me the worst sort of mother in the world… But, I _felt so_ … _so alone_. _And afraid_. It wasn’t just the idea of having a baby, and then losing them, _not hours_ after I birthed them. It was, the fact of having to adjust to my life after having been married to you. The thought of coming home to a cold, empty house. To eat dinner _alone,_ spend nights in the front parlour, drinking port aperitif’s, _alone_. _No one… there_ beside me when I crawl into bed after the _gruelling stretch_ of the nightshift.” She eludes. But, she realised she was heading off track.

“ _Forgive_ me… I’ve wandered _off tangent, somewhat_ …” She clears her throat, refocusing herself. Thomas found her thigh, and squeezed it in comfort. Urging her to continue. He loved _any word_ that came from her wonderful lips. And his touch told her that. Bolstered her strength, gave her measures to carry on. “They were born at 6 in the morning, on a rainy, Novembers day, the sky was barely light, I remember looking out the window as I was giving the _final push_ , and I saw the sky was a _bruise_. Purple, blue, peach, red and pink. It was a beautiful sunrise. And after, _nine hours_ , of labour. I was about ready _to give up_. Cursing _every single thing_ in my path, screaming, wailing my pain away. I felt a pain that felt like someone was hacking out my lower intestine with _a dull spoon,_ and then I heard _them cry_. And I cannot say that I have ever heard a sound quite like it. It was… _phenomenal._ They’d told me that when you hear your own child, cry, it will _change you. Or that,_ you’ll know the feeling of motherhood when you hold your new-born for the first time. Being a Nurse, and not an overly, _emotional,_ person. I waved that off. I remember I thought. ‘ _That won’t be me.’_ But _, dear god, it was. I…_ heard my child cry, _and I….”_ She was lost for words, recounting it. “I was _speechless.”_  Thomas caressed the sight of her with his eyes, _how enraptured_ she was. _It beguiled him._

“It was Arthur they put in my arms. I held him, and _… I knew._ I just _knew_ I would have gone to the edge and the end of the world to keep _him safe_. He was _my boy_. _My baby.”_  She explained, she reached into the box, tears sparkled in her eyes, brimming under them, as she brought out a picture, and laid it out on the bedsheets before him. It was a poor snapshot, a tiny, incomprehensible bundle, with dark hair, and eyes rested shut, swathed in a blanket. Thomas picks it up gently, as if he was handling _the very_ new-born _itself_.

“After, they gave me him, I’m afraid, I can _give no_ further accounts of your daughter’s birth. Firstly, because I then _lost consciousness_ from lack of blood. And, _second, well_. The doctoring at Oakhampton was, not the _most shining example_ of western medicine. Doctor’s swooped in fleetingly, mostly to administer relief for nervous complaints by way of something _cheering._ I had undiagnosed twins. I never knew myself, until, _four days_ after Hector had them taken away to an orphanage in Hampshire.” She told him. Thomas looked up at her, both enraged, and concerned.

“They’re in _Hampshire?_ How could you have let him take _them so?_   And in _such a manner?”_ He asks, gentle, but _fretful_.

“I was _coming to that_..” She explains sadly. “I was still _so angry_ with you. I couldn’t fight Hector, because I didn’t feel I’d a leg to stand on. He’d gone to so much trouble to set me free from Allerdale, and our marriage. I, didn’t want to risk his wrath, or seem ungrateful. I wanted to forget my past. I missed having a profession. I was never cut out to be an idle Baronet’s wife. I wanted _a purpose_. And, if it wasn’t… _in loving you._ Then I thought, I had to find my own way. And that I may aswell try my hand at the Royal London. I applied to be Erik’s assistant. I grew familiar with the ever-changing society of London once again. _No one knew_ of _our_ marriage, so, I told them the fashionable excuse that I’d been _on the continent_ , nurses training in _some outpost._ Slowly, the fragments of my life started to heal together again… then, _though now_ , I’m not convinced it _was, by happenstance_ , I met _Henry. St. Clair_ …” She told.

“But, before him. Something in me _, turned._ I couldn’t ignore the fact I had children, out there, in the way. No matter my anger. They didn’t deserve _punishment_ for my anger with you. I travelled to Hampshire, that January, after having parted with them in the November. On my life, I’ll never forget the wretched place they were in. It was run by Catholic Nun’s, they didn’t give them names. _Just numbers_. It was horrid, they were suffering with impetigo, and had rashes where they weren’t cared for properly. I couldn’t let them do that to them. I had them, moved to London. Where I could visit whenever I liked. Some weeks, I went three or four times. I couldn’t get enough of them. I placed them under the care of the Anglican Nun’s at St, Anthony’s… It’s _a lovely, warm_ , homely as is possible, foster home, in Langley Road. When they _grew old enough_ , they’d be schooled there.” She explained. Sniffling a little.

“St. Antony’s…” Thomas remarks in a hushed voice. “Patron Saint of _lost things_ …” He adds.

“ _For a while, they were lost things…”_ She explains, crying. _"So was I."_

“Are you a _ngry with me?_ Because I left _our beautiful children_ to the care of strangers in my stupid anger? If you are, I can’t blame you. Because I _punished myself over and over_ , that they were treated _so ill_ because of my selfish feelings…” She sobs, rambling, stroking her fingers over a picture inside the box. Not facing him, so he couldn’t see her salty tears that now came quick and fast. She bites her trembling, sad lip. As she sees his hand slither over hers. And then his lips gently kiss at her bare shoulder. He twists closer. And he whispers, barely audibly “ _My darling, please look at me…”_ She does, and he watches a tear fall down over her cheek, hitting her nightgown. Leaving a dark, white spot where it fell.

He is close to her now, and giving her a look that was so intensely passionate, and emotional, she almost _doesn’t recognise it_ in him. He slowly shakes his head.

“No. no, You, my love, are guilty _of nothing_ that warrants my anger. How could I be _so monstrous to be angry?_ Your actions _can only, and will_ only ever warrant _my amazement_. What you did, it was, _so courageous_.. I’m not angry with you one jot. It is you, who should, and had _every right_ to be angered at me for the position _I put you in_. I believe that even in all the seven circles of hell itself, there would still _be no place_ for a man such as me _. For the magnitude of my sins._ ” He tells her.

“You saved my children. And you, are a _wonderful, brilliant_ mother. To do all you did to ensure their happiness, _how could you not be?”_ He interjects. She dries her tears with the back of her hand. “I refuse to let you, _condemn yourself,_ anymore.” He tells her kindly.

“If I can’t punish myself for my past. _Then neither can you_. Especially… in odes to your, _revelation,  last night.”_  She says in a hushed tone. His lips purse a little, and he decides he needs to elucidate on his secret.

“After you left, _that morning_ , when I awoke, and I returned back to Allerdale, alone, she said, that she was going _to come after you_. _That there was no place you could go, where she couldn’t find you, and slip a knife between your ribs…”_ He choked. Swallowing down tears. “I could _no longer hear_ her spew out, _such foul, dark_ wishes. _I snapped_.  I often wonder how my current situation would _be different_ , had I maintained my composure. But, she’d attacked me, told me she was going to find, torture and kill you. How she wanted to cut _this lovely hair_ , for one of her sick _trophy’s…”_  He enlightened. As he spoke of her hair, his eyes went to it, and his fingers lovingly ran through a lock of it. Feeling the natural shape of it. _How silken it was,_ how _perfectly pale_ it made her look by proxy, how fiery it was in comparison to his pale fingers.

“ _I can’t_ … pretend the fact of it  isn’t _shocking. And despicably macabre._ But I rammed a knife into her chest because she told me she would _kill you_ , _and unless I stopped her_ …” He said nothing else, he shook his head. Letting his words finish themselves.

Vianne bit her lip. “ _Let us agree_ on something, _Thomas?”_ She tells him. His teary eyes meet hers. He silently bade her to go on.

“The past, _stays exactly_ where it should. _Far behind_. I’ve _spent so long_ , looking _back_. All we should be doing now, is looking _ahead._ Because _like it or not,_ I’m afraid your stuck, solidly, in _my future_ , Thomas Sharpe.” She explains. She reached for the box once more, and puts more things on the bed. He looks down, and his heart swells _. One_ because of what she’d just ordered they do, _and second_ , because of the thing, now facing up at him, from the bed below.

It was a picture, dated only _just in the past month_ , of his two children. A dark haired boy, and a flame haired girl. Looking just like their parents, in miniature, peering, smiling, up at him from the sheets below. He looks across at her, smiling. His chest expanding full of love, for her.

“She’s _you.”_ He remarks. He reaches for the picture, bringing it closer, touching the paper tenderly, as if he were stroking their cheeks as if they were before _him_ in person. _Sat on the end of the bed._

“I _may echo_ that very phrase back at you, Sir, _in regards_ to Arthur…” She tells, beaming through her previous tears.

“ _Arthur?_ ” He asks, smiling wider. “Call me a _mad, emotional fool_ if you will. But it _suits him.”_ He smiles, looking, _adoring_ the picture in his hand. She smiles, hearing him say that, and that he liked the name, none of them had chosen.

“Maybe _you’re right_. That was _the one good_ thing, your uncle did.” He tells. She nods, agreeing. Before she realised, so far, she hadn’t even told him _their names…_

“Meet your Children, _at last. Sir Sharpe_. Juliette Earnest-James. But everyone calls _her Julia, like my mother’s name_. And Arthur Earnest-James. I agree, _the one, half-decent_ thing Hector did, was naming them almost after my parents. _Artemis, and Julienne._ Plus, I don’t think the names James, or Beatrice would have _been appropriate_.” She explains.

“ _Or Lucille_.” He adds to that list.

“ _God_ , How could, _I, have made_ two, such, _perfect, things?”_ He asks, astounded. Looking at their picture. She tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow, and pressed her lips to the juncture of his neck. Here was _a loving father_ , and no mistaking it. It made her heart skip.

“Because _you’re perfect to me. Scars, secrets and all.”_  She sighs in a simple whisper.

When he turned to look at her, his eyes _sparked._ Seeing the gaze in them, is like a flintstone striking a sparking heat of beginning a fire down in her gut. And he leans over to press a yearning kiss to her mouth. As he does, it ignites something, _deep, primitive_ , in her, aswell as him. It was lust, they both felt. It spread, growing hungrier, and more ravenous, when their lips pulled away. Breathless, he tugs her closer now, his eyes preying on her, as his mouth seeks for hers again.

“I’ve another answer for that question _too_ …” He growls. Moaning as he kissed her, greedily. And groaning when he pulled away. Her hands sliding to tug into his thick hair, her fingernails grazing his scalp, drives him _wild. Feral, even._

“Also because, in these past few days,  we’ve had lots _, and lots, of practice_ …” He purrs, snaking his arms around her, yanking her onto his lap, hearing her whimper as he did it.

Hauling her there. His hands grip her hips, but one leaves her glorious curves, to encourage that flimsy night dress down over her breasts, which his hungry eyes rake over when he pulls it far enough to see her breasts nudged free. Her back arches as he practically _makes a meal_ out of her heaving bust. Her nipples pebbled hard, and with her thighs split over his lap, her positioning is perfect.

His mouth sucks hungrily at her pale skin. His hot, wet mouth playing, toying with her. _Ever so gently,_ taking her pert nipples between his teeth, only grazing. _Only teasing_. His tongue delights in arousing the delicious buds into harder, rosy nubs, making evident her own erotic awakening. His nose pressed against her sternum as he mouths across her chest, she throws her head back and gasps his name. He growls more when she rakes her hand through his hair again. It is odd, how erotic, his brain makes the thought, yet, he is ravenous in thinking that these, perfect, shapely, heavy things were responsible for her nourishing his children. It sets free in him, a desire he _didn’t think plausible_. But as he took her peaks in his mouth once more, _and sucked,_ keeping careful, _sharp,_ eyes on her face. The pleasure that shoots through her, because of it, and the gasp she made, _flares straight to his cock_. It makes him _all the harder for her._

What made him all the more, _wild,_ was the following realisation that her nipples were now, oh-so-very sensitive, more so than they had been before they separated. And this thought gives him no end of smug, glee.

His hands press to her back, sliding down, pushing her, grinding her lower body against the hardness of his thighs, and the aching proof of his arousal that seeked, _so badly_ , to be gripped tight, inside her velvet walls. He wanted her writhing atop him. He wanted to do every filthy, glorious thing he _could think of_ to her body, before the night was out. He wanted her coming _undone_ over, and over _and over._

At his pressing, rubbing her body down on his burgeoning erection, her hands quickly abandon his hair, and dig into his back. _Hard._ She knew the sting of her nails digging in, only served to _spur_ him on. She looks down at him, her face creased in soundless, ecstasy as she meets his scorching gaze. He nudges her lips into his, swallowing her moans down his throat. His hand strokes her neck, keeping her near. And when he made her breathless, wanting. _Aching for more._ He taunts her, pulling away, he dives for her neck, and runs his teeth, sucking, nipping over her throat, guiding her hair out of his path, he tilts her neck to the side with his chin, gaining access to the whole stretch of it, as he whispers to her…

“I intend to _use you thoroughly_ , tonight, my love. I’m going to give you as much pleasure as you can possibly take. And only when you beg, _and beg me_ to stop, _will I even consider_ being _through with you_.” He rasps into her ear.

She sighs his name, going to kiss him again, but he cuts her off, his lips hit hers, _powerfully_ , and his mouth invades her own. In no time at all, she is flattened to the bed below, his body torn out from beneath her. He doesn’t even spare the seconds to strip her of her gown, and his mouth _is upon her._ His hands guide her legs open, snapping them wide, flat to the bed. Her hands grasp for the end of the bed, holding the stead with a grip that could bend metal, her mouth stretched wide open, groaning. For his mouth was all too occupied sucking marks to the insides of her thighs, leaving wet trails, avoiding the place she needed him most. She yells, and _she cannot_ hold it back, as his mouth finally, _blissfully_ , meets her tender sex. He draws his tongue directly down the middle, dipping inside her, then trailing down over her plump lips. The taste of her, made his eyes _flutter shut in delight_. And his thighs clenched with _how badly_ it aroused him more. He adored making her come quivering, convulsing into a climax around his tongue. Though he _liked it best_ after he’d spent his own climax in her, a fair few times. He liked to feel the combination of their pleasure, _drip_ , out of her as he ate, and ate of her until she _screamed._ There was something _so inherently erotic_ about seeing his release oozing from her sex, down over her thighs. And whenever he did fulfil that pleasure, her walls would tremble, tight about his tongue.

Now, her hands almost threaten to break the skin of his shoulders. Clawing marks into his fair skin, that he’d adore to find, come morning. Her head is thrown far back, and he makes her gasp, _beautifully,_ when he presses two fingers to her moist, ripe clit, throbbing _with need_ for him, and his attentions. He drags his touch down, before he twists, flipping his hand over, and plunging his two digits, _deep._ He curls, flicks, and rubs in patterns that he found drove _her mad_. And as his fingers work, so does his mouth. His tongue seeks for her little, hard pearl of pleasure that existed only and purely for her ecstasy. And when he sucks that deep, she screams for him. One shapely leg, curls around his torso, and those, superb, rounded thighs he adored, _shiver_ , at his ministrations. Slowly, he increased his speed, hearing evidence of her impending orgasm, wetly swilling against his fingers. Every drop she gives, he drinks in. coaxing more and more out of her, as if wringing oil from a cloth, he tempts out every sound, moan and ounce of pleasure that is like music, or audible pleasure, to his ears. He hears her nails scrape into the wooden frame of the bed above, her spine arches, thighs twitch, and _he slows_ , dragging it out, hearing her whine. “I’m not letting you get away with _so little benefit,_ as to my actions _.”_ He whispers, sucking a kiss to her thigh as he watches her buck some more. She wants to chide him, but _she can’t speak._ He adored this, seeing her writhe, Edging her back, and forth, from the precipice of climax. He teased. And teased, and taunted, and then, when she could _barely contain_ her sobs of need, he let her shatter. He made her quake with such _powerful, mind-numbing pleasure_ , he had become frequently successful at leaving _her bedbound_ the morning after such attentions.

She eventually, as he relents, finds her head enough, to cry out his name. He smirks, grinning, his smug face watching her tormented in delight, from below, her thighs framing his face, as he looks up. When he sucks her clit deep into his mouth, and rubs his fingers harder, she can hear him moan, groaning into her, his eyes shutting as he felt her quiver about his tongue. “ _God, Vianne_. I can’t deny you pleasure when you _look so stunning suffering_ it.” He mumbles, the wet, sloppy sounds of his fingers _are obscene_ , _and dirty_ , and _it shouldn’t_ make her so aroused. _But it does._ Her moans _double, she can’t get away from him_ , and he feels an entirely new rush of taste, and wetness, her release, come flooding onto his tongue. He laps up _every drop_. Taking her _deep,_ his tongue darting in, _for more,_ not finishing his actions, or sinfully good movements, until she gripped his hair hard, and tried to unlatch his mouth from twirling invisible shapes over her tender sex. When he does pull off, away from her, he does so slowly giving her one, last long, slow lick that leaves her gasping his name as he feels her thighs quiver under his hands. Feeling her shudder _even more_ as he then tastes the insides of her thighs. Getting that sweet, yet salty musk, her taste, on his tongue when he lapped from clit, all the way down her labia. _The finest savour he’d ever tasted_. He watches her drift back to earth, ferally surveying her nearly naked form, with her gown bunched at her waist, covering _only_ her stomach. He can see the trails of his mouth on her. Her nipples still wet from his mouth, as the light _catches evidence_ of his having been there. Aswell as the creamy remnants of her orgasm that gushed out from between her engorged, ripe, lips. _To him, there are no sights more beautiful than this._

He arches over her, and his mouth sucks kisses, up past her cleft, over, up across her navel. He kisses the beautiful, soft stomach and the silk of her lower abdomen where she’d once been wide with carrying his children. He nuzzles his nose there, for a second, nudging her gown up, out of his way, before heading upwards over the planes of her body. He grips either side of her nightie and gently coaxes it down her, encouraging her to raise her hip up, so he could guide it off. She watches him, yelping when, in her pushing her hips up towards him, he latched his mouth to her sensitive, core once more, sucking, and licking at her. She fists her hand in his hair at the unexpected intrusion, moaning his name incredulously. Her head and neck stretched back as he didn’t relent laying love to the spot that was still trembling, over sensitised from his talented mouth. He grins, chuckling as he crawls up, over her nipping at her nipples before he dives, smirking for her neck. Kissing her there, her weakest spot, he feels her knees tremble, and he knows the pair of them, are just _getting started_. He pays care not to disturb the thin, red line of a cut across her throat that Henry had given her, he feasts on the delicacy that was the skin of her shoulder, and the side of her neck.

“ _You sound surprised_ , my love. _What else were_ you expecting when you put that, _beautiful, drenched sex_ , _so near to_ my face” He asks her, smugly. She wraps an arm around him, and kisses the wetness of his mouth away. Erotically savouring the remainder of her, across his mouth. Their mouths crash together, and their tongues entwine in a private dance. When he makes her moan enough, having just kissed her, she pulls back, he tries to keep the kiss going, following her as she retreated. But when he can’t, he bites down on her neck, _growling lustfully_ , feeling how she _shivered_ under his teeth. “ _Oh_ , you… _ugh_. _Know how_ …to, _oh, god, render_ me useless… _Feel secure_ in the knowledge, my love, that _such an honour_ doesn’t go to any other _man, than you.”_  She purrs. Speechless once more as his lips worked sinful magic on her weakest spot. Gooseflesh covers her arms, and legs, as she parts her legs to welcome him to press fully against her front. She feels every athletic, toned, and slabs of male muscle, the weight of him, _irresistibly pushing down_ on her. His hot, thick hardness ruts against the apex of her soft thighs. His hand grips her waist, and it’s his turn to growl now. Lust clouding his mind entirely, fogging out any other thought, other than, _having to be inside her._

 _Ideally, he’d have feasted and lapped at her tender cunt until she begged him for mercy with tears rolling down her cheeks with her hands fisted in his dark hair._ But he underestimated just how much _he needed her._

His thumb finds her stiff, tight clit, and swirls in tight, small circles. She grabs for his shoulders, and as her head stretches back, he nips at the long, pale column of her throat that was one, among _the hundreds of things_ , he _loved most, and missed most about_ her. His lips smile, next to hear ear, feeling her hips grind against his working hand.

“Buck your hips more, darling, take your pleasure from my fingers… I want to _feel you, and watch you_ climax. I want to see the _beautiful, supple, mother of my children writhe_ around on the end of my fingers…I want to _see you, cum_ ” He taunts sexily. She bites down so hard on her lip, it begins to feel sore. His request was a dark, lustful one, and she can’t help but oblige, with that deep voice purring audible sex into her ears. A few more jerks from her shuddering hips, and she moans in loud succession, tripping from her lips, her pleasure is evident by the trembling of her body, and the expression of ecstasy on her face. He kisses down her neck, removing his hand from being pressed to her dripping cunt

“How _much more can you take?_ Have I _tired you out yet_ , my sweet?” He asks. An incoherent moan is her answer, she lifts her head and is met with his lips moulding to hers.

Without much warning, he arches himself over her, allowing his throbbing length to guide inside her. Thrusting all the way into her well-lubricated core, to the hilt, in one powerful push. When their bodies join so sharply together, he savours the moan, _of her toe-curling pleasure_ as he begins to rut, and tug against her. The slick, sloppy tug and plunge of digging inside her deep, makes him _groan_ , open mouthed, his breath hot, _delicious_ , against her shoulder. Her legs arc over his hips, and she moans against the _sheer animosity_ of his rhythm, his hands go to clutch, and claw into her fleshy thighs, pulling her up harder and harder onto his cock, feeling her body jolt beneath him. Her nails rake over his back, and he moans, coming low to her now, giving her a feral kiss, as she enclosed her arms about his shoulders, stroking his onyx mane back out of his burning, bright eyes. _He wonders, watching her face, how could she look so innocent, and pure, when she was so full of him?_  

He gives a sharp buck of his hips, and she bites down her lip, until he replaces her teeth, with his mouth. His tongue slipping along her _perfect_ mouth. She’d groaned, he realised, because he had brushed pressure against her pubic bone, stimulating that tight, pearl of her pleasure that would be sorely overused by the time he _grew close,_ to being sated, tonight.

“Should I _stop?”_ He teases, taking her nipple into his mouth, kissing an open-mouthed trail from there, up to her neck. His hands still viced about her spread thighs. She scrapes her nails across his scalp, and when her mouth is an inch away from his, she speaks. Never having been _surer_ of what her answer would be. “ _Don’t you dare. Thomas.”_  She purrs onto his lips. He kisses her with gusto, and a growl of utter carnality, his arousal twitches with longing at her demand. “You _insatiable minx.”_   He smiles. Amazed in the ability she had to make him _wild_. _Loving how she couldn’t get enough of him. “_ You won’t _be so chipper_ by the time I’m through with you, _Ms. James._ I promise you. You’ll be sore, bruised, and aching in all the best, _most intimate of ways…”_  He promises, because then, he _truly begins_ to _move._

If she didn’t believe him before, she did now. He slid out of her, almost entirely, before slamming back in. Repeating the intimate, _delicious pattern._ Brushing over spots inside her that _felt magical_ when he stimulated them. She scrabbles her hand for his back, and holds the strong column of his neck as he moves. She adores feeling his back muscles tug, pull and twist as he lunged in and out of her. She can feel the perspiration gathering on both their bodies, her hair sticks to her neck, as his does to his forehead. Panting, she pushes hair out of his way. His fevered lips join her again. His pace grows sloppier, less concentrated on driving her to ecstasy. He gets swept up along with her. His fingers twine into his hair, as his leave fingertip shaped bruises in her soft thighs. The sounds that escape the both of them, only _serve to intensify_ their need, their lusts. The wet, evidence of her previous orgasms feel heavenly about him, as her tight walls milk him _of everything_ he has to give. Her sex _sucks ravenously_ at his cock, driving him to _go deeper, push harder, aim_ to trigger those sensitive, tender nerves from her last climax. He pounds harder, so hard, _every wonderful thrust,_ as his thick member stretches her, splitting her open, every thrust from such, punches _the very breath_ from her lungs. She feels the base of her spine, begin to tingle, the nerves gathering like lightning, thrashing through her body. She groans, panting her forewarning to her lover. Her orgasm hadn’t had time to grow slowly, he is coaxing it out of her quickly, pulling it forth with immense speed that leaves her bucking.

“Thomas...” She cries, warning him, her mouth sliding open as his lips attacked her neck. Nipping, sucking, biting, as he too began to loose all control over his impending climax. _But he’d be damned if he came first, he was a gentleman. Ladies first was his steady rule…_

“Come undone _for me_ , Vianne.” He gasps in a growl. As he gave his last few, unable to help it when she clamped down hard, her velvet walls robbing him of his foothold on his pleasure as she reaches the sweet, heady relief of an orgasm that leaves her reeling. His release seizes him hard and fast, following hers. He emptied himself inside her, _filling her completely._ Finishing deep in her tender, throbbing walls. His last few thrusts leave her trembling, her legs spasming, and her mouth dry from shouting his name, loud, so loud, she was sure the townhouse across the street would know his name. She is spent, starry eyed, and panting for him. His hands leave her legs, and they drop to the bed, exhausted. Sweat is beading now on his brow, and slithering down his back, between his shoulder blades. His head hangs low, as he looms over her, looking at her ribs, swell and tug as she fought for breath.

 _“_ You’re _everything I’ll ever want_ and _more besides...”_ He sighs, as he comes down low. Kissing her, she lazily crosses her arms over him, as he caresses her thighs and kisses her through her breathlessness. _Her heart warms_ , still thudding hard, through his sweet, simple confession. When he pulls away, he smiles down at her. “Though, _I’ve two_ requests…” He speaks up. Through hooded, sex tired eyes, she peers up at him, her hand carting back through his hair, as strands of it sprang forwards over his temple.

 _“One_ , that, you take me to St. Antony’s.” He asks purely. She smiles, caressing his arm, _absolutely accepting_ his terms, and awaiting his next entreaty.

“ _Second_ …” He lusts, sliding himself further down the bed, his eyes were _ravenous_. She gasps, cottoning onto his meaning. Not sure if her body could take it. She bites her lip, moaning as he speaks again. “ _Well_ …” He remarks with a smile, as he eyes up her dripping sex, gushing with the evidence of him. His tongue reaches out, and laps, once at her, and she bucks. “ _Why waste time talking?_ …” He growls, before he _dives in._

 

~

 

 


	23. St. Anthonys

 

 

The squat, pointed, and honeycomb hued brick building that was St. Anthony’s, was perched far back off the residential street, it eased his fears that it was in a respectable area of town atleast, it was  fenced off with an iron spiked fence, Thomas imagined it creaked and groaned, whining on its rusted hinges, when the metal gate was pushed open. The faded grass lawn, was strewn with golden brown leaves, evidence of the children who lived within the kind walls lay prominent on the huge expanse of lawn. A forgotten whip and top, and a couple of unloved hobby horses had been carelessly left behind, strewn on the damp grass, from the previous capering about the day before. The front of the stocky house was guarded by high, tall trees, he saw a bulky shape nestled in one is a makeshift tree house, and there is a wooden plank swing, drifting in the mornings breeze, rocking back and forth, swaying to an invisible tune.

His attentions from the gardens are diverted up to the house once more. It was a large place. From the outer exterior, his first thought is how warm and cosy it looks. He didn’t know what to expect, in all honesty. But when Vianne spoke of nun’s, and an Anglican order. He imagined a strict, cold place. With high windows, sparse halls and chilly rooms with nothing but a bed as the décor. Guarded by strict, shouting nuns, shrouded in black, punishing the orphans and bastards who ended up in their care. And took pains to remind them daily they were all sinners headed for hell as they supped down gruel like Dickensian  work house fodder. That’s what he expected of an orphanage. He certainly didn’t expect this place to feel, nor look, so _invitingly kind._

The brick of the gothic house, is a warm, buttery gold. There are tall, wide windows, letting in plenty of sunshine, and which are decorated with cypress wood. Their latticed frames, painted a faded bottle green, and dripping with elegant pointed gothic design. The low, sloping petticoat tiled roof, is a slate grey, and well-kept. Where the overhang of the roof shadows the windows, there is an intricate border to the stone which presides over one side of the house. The front door is lined with white stone, forming a carved arch around the merry, pillar-box red wood of the solid door. Though humble, the house is of a large size, with triple rows of rickety chimneys, and a towering turret lodged on the side of the house, near the front door. He didn’t expect _to like_ this place, but he _can’t deny_ its homeliness. Not with a blue shrouded, aproned, elderly nun, pegging out washing onto a line, far across the gardens. The scent of Proctor  & Gambles, Ivory soap, a sparkling clean and fresh, linen smell, emanates through the air, toward them like a greeting visitor, tugging them through the gate. There are yellow pansy’s growing happily in the red window boxes that sat on every sill. The gardens are brimming with jovial daisy’s, and lush privet hedges. From inside the house, comes the raucous nature of children playing, happily. The gravel path that swirled through the garden, leading up the steps to the front door, is as inviting as the amiable place itself. But to Thomas, that path was one of _the hardest_ he’d ever embark upon. He knew that much.

Vianne, stood by his side, slightly behind him, looking pale and nervous in  her powder blue satin dress, velvet coat of a midnight hue, and her hat of cobalt. She was nervously chewing her lip. He could hear her hands fidget, the navy leather of them squeaking as she did so. She watched him place one hand on the iron fence before him, taking in all that the sight of St. Antony’s had to offer. He hadn’t spoken since she’d ordered the coach to stop. They’d stepped out, and he had been _wordless ever since._ His attention captured by the place. She watched that handsome profile, pale, dark straight hair, scar, and all, look at the house presented to him. She couldn’t tell if he was _displeased,_ or _overjoyed_. His face is _too stoic to tell_ _anything by._ When he does speak, after a long few moments, it is a barely audible hush.

“It’s _nothing like_ I imagined it would be…” He spoke sincerely. With the utmost flattery in his tone. He looked for a few seconds more, watching the nun in the gardens reach for more wooden pegs, humming to herself, oblivious to the two visitors loitering in trepidation by the front gate. She doesn’t know how to answer him. So she steps forwards, and comes right up, flush to the iron fence, right by him.

“That’s Sister Beatrice. She’s been with the Order of the Blessed Lady Mary’s for sixty-six years now. She was one of _the first_ postulant women in England to take Holy orders from the church. It took her thirty years to get that position in the clergy. She has a terribly fond sweet-tooth, and _she simply adores_ Julia and Arthur. Always saves them a currant scone, or some bread and condensed milk, before the older ones get their mitts on them, so she says. She’s _eighty-nine_ now, but she doesn’t let her age _dampen_ nor hinder her spirit _one bit_ …” She explained, smiling. Looking over at her beau when she finished. Delighted to see her words caused a smile to crook on his face. He swallowed, then he looked to meet her gaze.

“Shall _we?_ ” He asks quietly. In a soundless effort of agreement, she reaches for the latch on the gate, and unhinges it. He watches her small, navy glove hand wrap around the handle, and smiles more, hearing the crick and screech of the iron gate as it was swung open. Vianne let it swing right out, her hand went back down to her side, and he found it. Holding her left hand _tight_. As her right was incapacitated by the wicker basket she had loaded with what she called _essentials_. For both the nuns, and the children. Some of Mrs. B, her wonderful cook’s, famous drop scones. Still warmed, for the Sisters, dotted with fat, sweet, plump raisins, and a jar of crushed raspberry jam to go along with. And such a variety of half-penny sweets for the children, the basket must’ve weighed a tonne with all the barley sugars, and confectionary she’d brought along. She bought them all a huge brown paper bagful of thick, splintered shards of sticky, golden toffee. Humbugs, liquorice twists, pear drops, bullseyes, and tiger nuts. He had offered to carry it for her, but she’d smiled that she _didn’t mind._ He also saw that she’d wrapped a small, secret parcel separately. Its contents, he couldn’t discern. Except for the bulk telling him some of it was soft clothing, and rigid books.

They walked through the gate, their soles both crunching the gravel underfoot. They come quickly through the front garden. Thomas wavers slightlly as they came to the under-hang of the front door, stepping under the outer stone threshold.

Vianne, familiar with the house, reached for the doorbell, and tugged on the pulley rope, letting the metallic clang signify to those within that they had callers at the front door. In no time at all, the heavy slab of the door is shuddered easily open from the other side, and a nun, swathed in sapphire blue, with a kind face appears in the gap. She had sun-coloured, fairly wrinkled skin. Barely etched with the toll of her age. Her eyes were grey, soft, worn, and _kind._ She had a sympathetic smile that had aged the lines about her mouth from its most frequent use. Her tunic swathed her entire body, so little could be said for her figure, but she looked surpassingly sprite, and energetic for her late age. Her hands are the same, sun-warmed, freckled hue as her face, with knobbled knuckles, and bony fingers. Slotted onto which, are several holy rings, taking up residence by her lower knuckles. Around her neck, on a simple, fine chain, atop her wimple which covered her neck, head and shoulders sits a simple, wooden cross necklace. Of course, nuns of the order gave up all possessions, and took strict oaths of obedience, and charity. So her rings, and her polished, black leather boots, must’ve been her only possessions, Thomas thinks. The Nun recognises Vianne _instantly_ , and her face, accordingly, split into an overjoyed smile, and those grey eyes turned to happy, liquid pewter in her elation.

“Vianne. It’s _so lovely_ to see you, my dear. _My_ , what a delight. For we weren’t expecting you til Wednesday next on your usual visit.” The Nun smiles widely, she had opened wide the door, and embraced her into a solid, firm hug. Vianne held her back. The scent of Yardley’s lavender, soap, and musty cloth from the Chapel fills her senses. The warming aroma of Sister Marianne. When they pull apart, the woman looks fondly at Vianne. Obviously more than pleased to see her. She seems to falter when she sees Thomas, lurking behind his ex-wife.

“ _Oh, do_ forgive my manners. Most unchristian, won’t _you both_ please come inside?” She asks, stepping out of the way, and letting the guests pass her, into the warm, atmosphere of the home. “May I fetch you something? Tea perhaps? Or some cake? Our cook made her infamous tiffin this morning, and it is, exceedingly delicious, as always…” She offers. They both decline. They can’t stomach food, either of them.

Each way he looks, all Thomas can see is reminders of how cosy, and homely this place is. Children’s artwork adorns the walls, along with clumsily embroidered bible passages hung up, enshrined, in frames along the flowery walls. Thick, ornate, worn wool rugs are underfoot, trodden to the beaten cypress floorboards, battered and bare below. Ahead, he can see a library, stocked with fat, leather bound books squeezed onto shelves that stretched nimbly from floor to ceiling, and a goldfish merrily glimmers in its bowl, warmed by the rays of sunshine on the windowsill. Up above, he sees the staircase, lined with a red rug up the centre. To their left is the kitchen, with a flagstone floor, a stove pumping out heat to keep the house warm, and a few nuns crowded round the dining table, pouring tea and eating huge slabs of cake, covered in jam. A couple of children are in the kitchen too. One girl, who she recognised as Enid, stood on a stool was having her dress hemmed by Sister Margaret, who did so knelt on a perfectly adequate, serviceable prayer cushion. And Johnathan and Timothy, were sat at the table enjoying jam and bread with the sisters too.

“It is _wonderful to see you_ , as ever, my dear. Do tell me, _who_ is your guest who joins you today?” Sister asked, assessing the tall, dark man, who was, in fact, so tall, the top of his head nearly brushed the moulding on the ceiling.

“Sister Marianne, this is my-.” Vianne begins, and when she pauses, fumbling for her words, she smiles and Thomas is intrigued as to why. She wants to stumble, embarrassed over the word. But then her bravery swells, and she realises that the sound of his newfound title was a lovely thought to bear in mind.

“This is Julia and Arthurs _father_ , Sister. Sir Thomas Sharpe.” Vianne explains. Sister Marianne, who, to her credit didn’t look the sturdiest, battle-axe of a woman, took that confession in her powerful stride. Vianne realised then, that she’d waited two years to let those words cross her lips. And it felt wonderful.

“My goodness. You certainly make a fine pair. And I see your son certainly takes after you sir.” Sister Marianne flatters, swaying forwards to shake Thomas’s hand. He returned the hearty shake.

 _“Our_ … circumstances, kept me unable to visit _until now_ …. Believe me, I _would not part_ with seeing them unless I _had too_.” Thomas tried to defend. Sister smiled wider. Her calming eyes taking in his revelation with an understanding blink, and a nod.

“We are not here _to judge_ your circumstances, Sir Sharpe. We harbour many children here, whose parents cannot afford them, or care for them well enough. We even have children who have been _cast out_ by their parents for no reason whatsoever, among these walls. It is a haven we have for them, in this house. When their own is in strife, we give help any way we see fit.” She explains.

“And your wife, has been an _absolute blessing_ to us, since she first housed Arthur and Julia here as babes in arms.” Marianne told him.

“To me, Sister, my wife is a blessing _wherever_ she chooses to convey herself.” Thomas flatters. When his eyes met Vianne’s, she flushes, and her spine squirms, alight with thrashing nerves.

Vianne chose that moment, after her cheeks stopped reddening, to have an attack of modesty. “Only some _bandages, and ointment_ , Sister. Hardly a cottage hospital. Barely anything, honestly...” She quips.

“We could happily have had you as a permanent fixture my dear. With _all_ you donate, and do for the children here, and for us nuns too.” She praised. Vianne absentmindedly, humbly, tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. “We’d be sorrier for the loss of you. Nurse James.” Sister japes.

“And need I mention how much the children, aswell as your own, _adore you?”_  Sister mentioned. Thomas could instantly see why. And he was about to be served a large example of just how deep such devotion went.

And on the landing above, small, barrelling footsteps thump, thundering to the banister, small, shaggy heads of hair, hang over and peer at the newcomers, and when they catch a glimpse of the both of them, children’s bellows start to echo through the cumbersome house. And, quickly, more and more footsteps thud on the ceiling _. “It’s Vianne!”_ came a boys shout, and ultimately, served as the call the rouse the troops, _as it were._

“ _Deary me_ , That is Perry Jenkins. The wildest one of our bunch… and one your most devoted _fans_ as I understand it. You’d better brace yourselves…” The nun warned. Thomas was about to enquire, when her warning became perfectly clear.

More footsteps clattered and bombed about above, and then the stairs are teeming with small children. Tearing down the stairs like hell furies. Grinning from ear to ear. The next thing he knows she is swarmed by them like a herd of insects. Swallowed whole by the crowds of children that gathered, laughing and giggling away, calling her name as she turned to each of them in unison. She reached for the basket and started handing out the goodies within. Which they gratefully took. The boys clamoured for her attentions, hanging on her every word as she bid them all hello, and the girls hugged her legs through her skirts, asking her about her hat, and her pretty dress. Smiling prettily at the woman in admiration. Thomas smiled at the sight of the kids swarming her. She was maternal through and through, and it was dazzling to see.

“Perry Jenkins. You must’ve grown two miles since I saw you last, _you little devil_. You’ll be a match for me soon…Lucinda, dear, you’re missing, _another,_ tooth? _Three last week?_ My goodness! Hello Sylvie, poppet, you appear to be missing a shoe… _Oh_ , how could I forget you two. Myrtle and Michael. Oscar, those Bullseyes are for sharing. Pass them round, you’ve been taught to divvy treats, have you not, or, am I mistaken? Polly, _yes_ , you may of course have my hat. But, _only_ , when your older, and your head gets big enough to _fit it…”_  She rambled, greeting them each in turn.

“Beloved, she is indeed.” Sister Marianne spoke to Thomas, smiling to him as they both beamed at the happy sight. Thomas’s smile crooked wider.

“She told us you were an inventor, Sir Sharpe. That your breakthrough came with inventing a _very clever_ machine for an American mining company…” Sister spoke, enquiring, engaging him in conversation as the children still congregated around his wife.

“That’s correct.” He smiled humbly. “Though I don’t know about the very clever part. I spend more time tampering and fixing the shrewish machines, than they do functioning well.  I’ve currently taken work designing a new coolant system for machines that could have scientific and medical use. My factory Is just up the road, in Gillespie Street.” He told her. She nodded, and smiled, near laughing.

“I knew you had to be Arthurs father from _the second_ I laid eyes on you, stood on that doorstep, Sir Sharpe. The bright blue eyes, the inky hair.” She told, those warming, dove-grey eyes sparkling with happiness, and plenty of canny spirit. _She was sharp as a tack, this woman._ His face must have made a picture, for it prompted her to elucidate further.

“Your son is _just like you_. Being, only _two of course_ , his faculties are limited until he gets a little bigger, and older. But the thing he enjoys most, Is building blocks. He has begun fitting puzzles together already. Now I know the true proverb behind the saying _, like father, like son_.” She smiles. That warm little confession touched his heart. Sister could see the man was very obviously touched by what she had confessed. He looked both part amazed, scared and unbelieving. Standing there, like a tall, pale, dark haired human lamppost. Marianne’s face fell when she noticed the fear in his eyes. His aura of trepidation powerful.

 _He’s like me…_ Thomas thought. _My son is like me._ _Please, dear god, spare that innocent soul the agony of being as tainted, twisted, and as broken as his wretched father, if there are similarities to be had. Please, don’t let him be like me. For that is the worst thing he could ever do._

 _“Forgive me_ , Sir, I’ve said nothing _to offend you_ , _I hope?”_ She asks.

“Not at all Sister, _it’s just_ …” He swallowed, his throat suddenly thick with emotion that choked him. He was wringing his leather gloves nervously in his hands. He looked tormented by his own thoughts.

“I’m scared.. _I, won’t_ be _good enough_. To be a _decent_ father to them, sister. I mean, of course, I don’t look… I’m, _scarred._ I’m worried they’ll scream, or cry at the sight of…” He told, unable to say it. But she knew, undoubtedly, he was referring to the long strike, of the tear stained, crimson scar down his face. He didn’t say it. But she knew that was what he meant.

The nun seemed to take this revelation completely in her stride. She nodded, and folded her hands in front of her, she met his eyes, and spoke once more.

“Children are more resilient than you may think, Sir Sharpe. I know, to someone who isn’t used to them, they can seem small, fragile. And they do need protecting, and looking after, of course. But it would surprise you how plucky they can be.” She tells him. He looked across to her, his fears eased, he watched Vianne smiling at the children, as she idly fixed a little girls wonky plait for her.

“I could _never_ stomach telling Vianne that above all, _that’s what_ scared me the most. She’d have thought me _a fool_.” He tells.

“She’d have said _the same_ as I, Sir _. I assure_ you of that.” Sister spoke wisely. They continued to watch the children gaggle around. And then, a mousy haired girl, who could have been no older than five, or six, stumbled as she tried to clamour after Vianne. Thomas shoved his gloves deep into his coats pocket, and smiled warmly at the girl. She looked down at her feet, and he saw that her red shoe, had come unbuckled. Instantly, he sidled closer, not too close so as to scare her, he knew his towering height would dwarf her and intimidate her, and he crouched to his knees. She was wearing a grey pinafore, and a thick, woollen, blue cardigan, and had a red ribbon tied, tucked into the back of her hair, drawing it up off her face. She had big, brown, darling doe eyes. And though she seemed weary of him at first, she gave him a shy, toothless little smile. Thomas looked at her, inaudibly moving for her foot, to aid her. She stood, swaying from side to side, nervous, with her hands behind her back. Thomas reached over to her shoe, and his dexterous fingers fumbled for the buckle, looping the leather through, and guiding it back to the worn hole it was used to sitting in. Unbeknownst to him, Vianne’s heart warmed right through, seeing him crouch, helping Katie with her shoe. She felt a tug of love for him, surge in her gut.

“Not _too tight_ is it?” He asked her gently. She shook her head, shyly. He smiled fondly at her. She was a dear little thing. “I like your hair ribbons, _they’re very_ pretty.” He smiled, tucking one loose bit of her dark hair back behind her tiny ear. She grinned, beaming at him. She was a darling little thing. She was all big eyes, and sweet smiles.

“What do _you say_ to Mr. Sharpe, Katie?” Sister spoke up, encouraging, gently. The little girl said nothing, but ducked her head forwards, and smacked a small kiss onto Thomas’s cheek. Before she turned bright red, and scurried off to the kitchens like a little scared mouse, in search of something to eat. Thomas smiled, getting to his feet, his knees aching as he rose.

“She’s a _sweet girl_ , Katie. Our _newest here._ She comes from a broken home. Her family couldn’t keep her. She barely speaks yet. Her father used to, give _her the strap_ , when she spoke out of turn at home. She’s coming along, _slowly_ , but we all estimate it will take her a great deal more time to trust us enough to know she won’t be harmed when she _does, eventually_ , speak.” Sister explained. Thomas was amazed the poor girl didn’t baulk at his size, and his scarred face. Marianne’s eyes shone cannily.

“ _See?_ More resilient than you think. Even the ones who’ve been through hell and beyond…” Sister spoke knowingly. Thomas had no choice but to put blind faith in her promise.

“And as for your, concerns, over being a decent father, sir. My advice is always this; _Love them._ That is what your child needs _above all else.”_  She tells him.

Thomas nods. “I’ve never met them, and already I love them _with all my heart_ , Sister.” He informs her. Because he did. The picture Vianne had of them, was in his pocket, close to his heart.

“In which case, you are already _a brilliant_ father.” She tells him kindly. The last of the children dispersed, the boys raucously running to the kitchens, or the gardens, and Vianne is left talking to a few girls, and after they too toddle away, she straightens, and re-hooks her basket to settle to the crook of her arm. Sufficiently emptied of all sweets now. Which made it all the lighter. She smiles across at them both.

“Are we permitted to go upstairs, Sister?” Vianne asks nicely. Thomas’s gut clenched. Swooping with excitement. _In_ _a few short seconds, he’d see them…_

 _“Of course_..” Sister gestured. “Though I know _you’re familiar_ with the route. Allow me to take you up..” She smiles, gliding noiselessly across to the stairs, heading up first, Thomas gestures for ladies first and follows behind Vianne. They go up the creaking, wooden staircase, treading the thick carpet, avoiding stepping dolls, or crunching wooden trains underfoot. Sister scoffed, and turned to apologise, seeing the jumble of forgotten toys hazardously laid across several steps. “Do forgive the toys. I believe some of the younger ones like playing on the stairs from time to time…” She explains. They both smile, and Thomas swoops down and uprights the fallen train, clicking the steam funnel back in place, as it had come loose. They continue past one landing, up another light, seeing the warm, wooden room that was the dormitory’s. Again, just like the rest of the house, it is just as warmly decorated. Pictures, drawings and embroidery are pinned to the walls above the beds, the small, cosy cots are laden with brightly coloured blankets and plump pillows. Toys are strewn everywhere within sight. And there were mason jars of collected wildflowers from the gardens, sat sparkling on the windowsill, in the suns light. Obviously they had been collected by the children themselves, there were wild daisies, scented stocks, holly hocks, and bluebells nestled, drooping yet vibrant in the confines of the glass jar.

They continue up, to what he guesses, are the nurseries where the younger children’s cots were. Up the landing, they tread the thick vermillion carpets, coming to the door. Sister pauses before it, twisting open the door handle, she looks back across at them both. Both parents, here together for their children. And she couldn’t intrude on that…

“I’ll leave you now. Sister Winnifred gave them their breakfast this morning. They should be awake now. It’s… _so lovely_ to have the both of you here to see them, _together.”_ She smiles warmly at them. “And, may I just say, if you decide that you want them with you, we’d of course, be overjoyed for you to take charge of their care. But may I hope that you visit from time to time, to let us know how all of you are getting along. You’ve been such a dear friend to us Vianne. All of us should hate to lose contact with you.” She urges. Vianne takes Sisters hands in her own.

“You may _depend upon_ it, Sister.” Vianne promises. “Without you, and the blessed order, I don’t know where I’d be, _I truly don’t_.” She thanked the woman. Because, she suddenly realised, she _never had._ _Oh_ , she’d helped comb the children for nits, helped donate winter clothes, blankets, soap, sweets, medical supplies, cakes from her cook, and other menial necessities and comforts. But she’d _never properly_ taken the time _to thank_ Sister Marianne for all she had done for Julia, Arthur, and for her. She was another providential saviour, alike Erik, and Thomas, to all of whom, she thanked her lucky stars to have in her life.

“I trust you know where you are, _now_ …” She smiled wisely, looking between them as Thomas lovingly squeezed his wife’s hand. “Because _I can see_ where you are now, even if _you can’t..”_  She smiled fondly, giving her blessing. Her hands folded in front of her, patiently, her smile jovial at seeing their _discernible ardour_ for each other. Plain as day. Plain as the nose on her face.

Sister opened the door before them, showing them a small, sun filled nursery, with only two cots inside, and a nun was sat in a rocking chair, reading a picture book to the two little ones, sat on the rug, idly playing with separate toys. The Nun looked up when Head Nun peered into the room, and wordlessly smiled at her Sister. Sister Winnifred, rose from her chair, a plain, sable beauty, judging by her dark eyebrows, she had a wide, soft smile, a gentle face, and clear blue eyes that were very pale in their colouring. She placed the book on the side, muttering kindly to the children that they had two visitors. Before she glided from the room, nodding hello to the parents, before both Nun’s smiled, and made their way back down the stairs. Leaving Thomas and Vianne to the room before them. He held her hand so tight, transfixed by the sight before him, matter of fact, his grip cut off the circulation to her fingers. She squeezed back whilst she still had the feeling in her hand left to utilize. She guided him forwards, stepping into the room, scooping up Arthur as he came bombing across the room, calling her name, and grinning madly _. ”Mama! Mama!”_  He cried, as he toddled quickly across. His arms outstretched. His cherubian face wearing a pure, joyous smile. At seeing his mother. He wore a little pair of green, tweed breeches, a white shirt, and a small black waistcoat. Thomas stood, unmoving by the doorframe, watching his wife hug his son close to her chest. Her eyes closed as she savoured him in her arms, stroking his hair, and taking him in deep. The scent of him, of ivory soap, and clean, young skin wafting in her direction as she cuddled him close.

“I missed _you so much, Arthur,_ my darling _._..” She smiled. Pulling back, and pressing a kiss to his chubby cheek, seeing he smiled, sucking his thumb, as his little hand, like a pink starfish, with the tiny rounded pebbles of his small fingernails, on each, reached out to touch her face, grabbing her cheek. Smiling at her all the while. She held him up against her hip, letting him see his father, just behind her, stood by the door. Julia, not to be left out, stood and rushed over to her mother too, chanting the same mantra that her brother had. “I missed both of you. You too Julia, poppet.” Vianne smiles. Julia fisted her hands in Vianne’s blue skirts, and tugged, smiling up, hugging her leg. Vianne moved to shift Arthur onto her other hip. But she was beaten to the punch. Thomas stepped forwards, and Arthur looked straight at him. To Thomas, his little, _piercing, blue eyed,_ look, was like an arrow of longing hitting him straight in the heart. _This was his boy_. _His son_.

“Hello, at last _, you_ …” He spoke softly, gently reaching over, and letting Arthur curl his little hand around his finger.

“You know who _this is,_ don’t you, _my loves?”_ Vianne asked her toddler as she crouched to tend to both of them. Arthur thought for a moment. Before one little word came sailing out of his little mouth. _“Dada.”_ He spoke, unsurely. Thomas smiled, choked, tears were in his eyes. He had seen the wedding picture of him and Vianne, pinned up above the cot. Obviously, even though he hadn’t been here in person, he had been talked about. He hadn’t been ignored, or forgotten, she’d seen to that much.

“That’s _right_..” He croaked. “I’m _your father_.” He cried fondly, sniffing back his emotions. As he stroked his sons head. His hand carting over the black curls that were the same as his own. The eyes that were just as sharp. Thomas had come to a crouch too, and slowly, like a shy baby dear, his daughter now toddled across to him. She reached out her hands, and he took them, her hands pawed at him. Going up to his face, she patted his cheeks, and laughed when he gently gripped her hand to his mouth, and kissed her fingers. But what both made them, _melt,_ was when she touched his scar, stroking down his face, smiling. _She wasn’t scared of his scars. She wasn’t afraid of him, because he looked damaged, and mutilated by his past, in more ways than one._ Julia didn’t care about any of that. And Neither did Vianne, or Arthur, because this was their family. _Their Father_. The man who’d come to find them again, when they thought they’d been lost.

“How could I possibly _be your father_ , you _beautiful girl?”_ Thomas asks Julia as she cuddled into him when he knelt to scoop her up, bringing her up into his arms. She was wearing a little blue dress, with white petticoat trimmed socks on her legs. Her thick, straight, red, hair was secured into a cobalt blue ribbon, tied back, half down, half up. She had a cherubs face like her brother. Only she had an impish nose, and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, like his wife did. He headed with Julia on his hip, like a little blue clad, red haired limpet, across to the small chaise that was crowded with toy and pillows, across the room, under the sunny, large window that beamed light onto the carpet below. Twirling mites of dust in the lazy, yellow light. The room, because the window was open a tad, smelt like sparkling clean soap, and the scent of fresh flowers, drifting up on the warm air from the gardens down below. He sits leisurely with Julia on the settee, feeling the sun warm the back of his neck. Vianne releases Arthur, and watches him toddle over to play with some wooden blocks near his father’s feet. Vianne stands, and watches as Thomas sets Julia down, and she zips straight to her dolls house, to fiddle and play with the family inside. She steps over the debris of toys, and joins her husband on the seat by the window as they watch them play. Thomas thanks Julia as she brings him over a blonde, red dressed doll, and places it in his lap. Then she totters off to do something else. He smiles after her, seeing that she had every spec of her mother’s sweetness. He reached for Vianne, linking his arm about her waist, cupping her hip, pulling her close. Hugging her tight. When he looked across the room, he saw the drawings they’d done, inconceivable scribbles, really, stabbed in pencil across the page. But by his count, he saw four figures in that picture. Two children, one with a black scribble for hair, the other, red. And both taller, figures, had the same colouring. One red. One black.

“You told them about me?” Thomas asked her in a hush. He didn’t turn to look at her. They were both too busy watching their children. Vianne reached for the parcel she’d wrapped for them. And gave it to Arthur, telling him to open it. When he tore away the string, and brown paper, it revealed a pile of new picture books, and some nice, new clothes. A knitted cardigan from Jeanie, for them each. One in butter yellow, and icy blue. Vianne smiled down at them with their new presents, before she answered him.

“How could _I not_ have?” She asked back. “They deserved to know they weren’t discarded. Like so many of this children in here. They had every right to know they had a father, somewhere. They didn’t have to know why we were apart.” She explained.

“Now I’ve seen them. I _never want_ to be parted from them again.” He says proudly. She closed her eyes and smiled. Letting a tear slip down her cheek. “How could you _bear doing it_ time and time again when you came to visit?” He asked her, in nothing but utter amazement at her. _As always…_

“I _scarcely_ coped.” She tells. Scooping Julia up for a cuddle, setting her on her lap. Pressing a kiss to her hair. Stroking her cheek with a knuckle. She cuddled her mother. Happy to see her again.

“I want us to be _a proper_ family, Vianne. You, me, _them._ _All_ of us, _together_. Making up for all those _rotten months_ we spent apart.” He tells her, swallowing, his voice croaky, throat thick, nearly clogged, with sentiment “I want to wake up next _to you_ , each morning. And I want to wake knowing that my children are safe, and snug, in their beds, and their own room, just down the landing from us. _Not hidden away,_ on the _other side of London_. I want to watch them grow. I missed their first words, steps, and smiles. And I will be damned if I _miss anything else_.” He explains powerfully. ”I _will_ be there at the dinner table _every night_. To bathe them, read them bedtime stories, teach them all the things I was _never taught_ as a boy. Teach them humility, love and sensitivity. Teach them to _be their own_ , and know that every turn  I am proud of _whatever_ they do. And whatever they love, so long as _they’re contented_. They shall _never want_ for anything, _again, ever.”_   He rasps sincerely. Full well meaning _each and every_ word, every promise. “And I _swear_ on my soul, that they’ll _never hear_ a cross word come from me in my life. They will know they _are adored_ , and _cherished._ Not ignored, and despised. Locked away from the world in a drafty, cold attic.” He pledged. Vianne let her head fall onto his shoulder. Biting her lip, trying to stem her tears of both happiness, and pain for him recounting his childhood.

“You _are not_ your father, Thomas. And we will not be like them when we raise them. They will know how much love we bear for them. They’ll feel it _every day_ , in every measure we can give them. They shall know it, _until long after_ you and I draw our last breaths.” She speaks softly. Squeezing his hand, _telling him_ she meant each word too. He held her back, just as keenly.

“Will you be my wife again, Vianne? Be the mother of my children, be a family, with me?” He asks, letting the sentence hang in the air. She smiled, and lifted her head up to gaze at him. He tilted to look at her, wiping away her tear with a flick of his hand.

“Thought you’d _never ask_ , Thomas Sharpe.” She smiles brightly.

“Shall we go home, _all of us?”_ He asks. Nodding to the twins as they examined their new picture books, before them. He reached over, as Julia was still on her mother’s lap, and stroked her cheek. Including them in his count too.

“All _five_ of us.” Vianne smiled.

Thomas frowned mildly. “You’ve _miscounted, dear.”_ He spoke. Not getting her hint at all. In fact, her meaning evaded him until she grabbed his hand, and brought it to her lips. She kissed his knuckles, the bruises on them having faded long ago. And she placed his hand over her lower tummy, on her bodice.

“Well. There’s four now, but soon, there will be five..” She smiled, beaming. Realisation dawned on his features. He’d never kissed her _so hard_ , or as _fast,_ in all his life. He never wanted to stop. And from now on, _he loves knowing he never would._

 

~

~~The End? of course not, I haven't run out of ideas for these two just yet...~~

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	24. Healing Old Wounds & God-Fathers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; These Foolish Things - Billie Holliday

 

 

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Wellington ward was sparsely inhabited at noon. After the bustle and business of the morning rounds by the surgeons and doctor’s, to peer over their territory like some overseeing, omnipresent deity. Checking all was well, and ‘champion’ as Dr. Fenwick, The London’s head surgeon seemed _oh-so_ fond of saying at every turn. Lunch too had finished, so even the bustle of the no-nonsense cooks up from the kitchens, was not present. A lazy lull soothed the entire ward. Gentleman read their papers,  or played cards with the fellow in the bed opposite, or took a quick half an hours kip, before the afternoon shifted into evening. A quiet, relaxed ward, was the one Vianne strode proudly onto. A wicker basket, was once again crooked onto her arm, for today, she was not a nurse. Not a member of staff. Today. She was _a friend_ , a visitor, coming to sit beside and care for one of her dearest companions.

She was dressed in an enviable gown of midnight blue silk, atop which, she had her _Parisienne_ inspired coat that cost more than a pretty penny. It was the softest, thickest, black velvet she’d ever felt. And it was covered in bright, coloured flowers emblazoned on the fabric, stitched to the gathering at her lower back, where it jutted out over her skirts, huge flowing sleeves drape from her arms too. A petite, very fashionable, chic, bowler hat perched low over her perfectly arranged hair. She had diamond droplets earring sparkling in her lobes, and she entered the ward in an eclipsing scent of French perfume and fresh roses, in odes to the wrapped, yellow roses she was holding. She looked elegant, striking, and she felt better than she had in years, despite the tenderness and nausea she hadn’t missed the first time round. She had every reason to be elated. She had an - ex - husband who loved her dearly. So much so, he had brought her the flawless, French coat she now wore. _For,_ he had said, _it was time he started spending some of his fortune on his dear family._

And she wasn’t _the only one_ to benefit. Julia and Arthur shared in their fathers wealth too. After their visit to St. Anthony’s, that very same day, they packed the children’s things, and whisked them back to Great Russell street. Of course, it was sad for them to leave, saying goodbye to the nuns, Sister Marianne, and all their excellent care. And of course, she’d miss seeing the orphans, and children too. Vianne had promised to write _, but_ , presently, these _happy_ four – _five pending_ – had to go about the business of starting to behave as _a family_. They had turned her spare, guest bedchamber, into a nursery for the two of them. Painted a warm, buttery yellow. It was soon _filled, crammed_ as Thomas had his way about it _,_ with the finest toys, books, and furniture. And the two of them had more expensive clothes, than they could shake a stick at. They hadn’t needed to hire a nanny. Jeanie was _more than_ competent, and it was a step-up from being a ladies maid. In both salary and position. Vianne had given her the title saying _‘You are far too clever to be pouring tea and laying fires for the rest of your life.’_   She came from a large, rowdy northern family, of _more than nine_ children. _There was nothing she couldn’t handle._ Today, for the spare hours she was out, she’d left them to Thomas’s charge. He’d been all too glad to oblige, making up for lost time. But he warned her _strictly_ to watch herself. For she was carrying his _third_ , already cherished child. He warned her to take _no unnecessary_ risks. She’d given _him a look_. But then _kissed him_ lovingly all the same, for his worrying after her.

She bid a merry hello to Sister Ada, and Nurse Jackson on the nurses desk. They enquired as to her visit, and when she gave them the name of the invalid she’d come to sit with. They were only, all too happy, to give her the bed number. She’d been in contact with Julian, who’d mentioned he was pretty groggy for the first three days afterwards, but now, he seemed to be more his old self again. She smiled at her nurse comrades, and headed across to bed nine. Currently shrouded from full view of the ward, by the privacy curtain tugged at half-mast. She strode across, her boots, those too were new - made of dreamily soft leather, in navy blue, imported from Vienna – which clacked on the floorboards as she moved, along with the swish of her silk skirts following her stride. She rounds the foot of the bed, and see’s that she isn’t Harriden’s _only visitor_ this noon.

For Julian Remmington-Holland was decadently sat, with his straight, cross legged, educated-lords posture, in a chair by the bed. He wore a suit that had come from the finest tailor in Saville row, under a fur trimmed lapel, overcoat. He held his expensive derby on his lap, along with his leather gloves. All his clothing, was comprised of tones of spotless grey, flanking his lean, tall body. His bulk reminded her a little of her Thomas. Lean, but _not without_ power. And just like his partner, there’s _no denying_ his handsomeness. He had a thin, angular face, with a bone structure so sharp, it could carve marble. His pallor was as pale as milk, which made his enchanting, feline shaped eyes stand out all the more, a fierce shade of jade they were, complimented by his thick, honey-blonde, curls, swooping down his forehead in their well kempt, neat manner. He had full, thick lips, a cupids bow, that made him look irresistibly like a Grecian god. When he spoke, his voice was deep, and soothing, like hearing the comforting rumble of thunder on a stormy night. Some would find it threatening, but she found it _calming_. His voice reminded her of a cello, it’s deep, bass notes alike listening to a fine orchestra play something fast, and powerful. Like Beethoven, Mahler, or Bach.

Erik’s eyes brightened when he saw her at the end of the bed. He was sat up, his feet folded under the covers, and an expensive looking tartan throw across the bed, that was most certainly _not_ property of the London, she had a feeling it was Julian lending his love a more _homely touch_ whilst he was on the ward. The patient was obediently wrapped up in a thick, maroon gentleman’s gown, with his own sleepwear, striped grey and white linen bottoms and a button-up shirt, underneath. He even had on his own Persian slippers set on the floor, by the bed. His head wound was both frontal and parietal to his skull. The frontal coming from his collision falling forwards, to strike her dining table, and the parietal coming from where Henry had struck him with the bent pipe. All in all, it would have made for a splitting headache. But, the fracture was tended too before any major haemorrhages could ensue. They let a hole in his skull to allow the bleeding not to clot on his brain. He would be alright, and that was all that mattered to everyone who loved him. She could see the extent of his fall forwards, he had yellow, purple, and dark, marring bruises, all across his eye, spreading down his cheek, forming a crescent shape about his orbital cavity. A taped white dressing was swathed across the left temple. But even through all the injury, he still smiled, and his eyes still shone. He was the same old Erik as per usual. She smiled warmly at both men. But it was Julian she spoke too first.

“Is the patient _behaving himself?_ Because here at the London, we have measures for those who don’t _conform_ to our nurses orders…” She warns, with a fond smile.

“ _Ah, yes_. Please enlighten me. Miss James, we were just discussing something to which I believe your view and contribution, should be rather _invaluable_ , and _helpfully poignant_. Doctor’s themselves, make _terrible patients_ , do they not?” Julian spoke up fondly, smirking, in poking fun at his partner. He’d obviously been here since visiting hour started. As there was a current, folded morning newspaper set on Erik’s blanket clad knees. And a paper bag, crammed full of iced buns, lay in plain view on his bedside cabinet.

“Demonstrable, _Nightmares.”_ She told him, grinning. Standing down her basket and taking off her gloves. She placed them in her deep pockets, and shrugged off her coat, unclipped her hat, and laid it all on the end table. She had pulled the curtain fully across, to give them all a bit more privacy, and out of her basket, she brought out a few items of her medical bag. A stethoscope, and a thermometer. She draws her pocket watch out of her skirt pocket, and crosses to his side. Julian laughs throatily as Erik looked happy, but downcast and unbelieving at the same time, as she reached for his wrist and too his pulse.

“I am, on _a ward_ , you know, James.” Erik speaks up drily. “Wards usually have nurses on them, who _do perform_ their jobs…”

“Putting _you in your place_. Dr. Your pulse is a _little fast_ for my liking. What have you been administered?” She asks, going now to listen to his chest, and ramming the thermometer carefully under his armpit. Not brooking any opposition. Julian smiled at him opposite the bed as he continued to hold his lovers hand. His thumb stroking over Erik’s knuckles, pleased to see she loved him as fiercely as he surely did. Care was second rate, so long as it wasn’t her own.

“Patient, Dr. confidentiality, _you know that…”_  He teased, not telling her, smiling wider. His eyes twinkled naughtily up at her. She berated him with her stern look and then turned to Julian. “What _has he_ been administered?” She repeated.

“They were concerned about his high blood pressure when he was admitted, the amount of liquid in his circulation, so they gave him a continued diuretic to help with that...” Julian informed her.

“ _Thiazide?_ ” She asked. Julian nodded. She seemed pleased with having received a satisfactory answer. She withdrew her stethoscope, and peered at his temperature reading, which was all tickety-boo as far as she was concerned. Contented there was no outlying symptoms about his recovery, she put her medical tools aside. Folding them neatly away, she then perches at the end of the bed, patting his feet. “ _I’m sorry_ to say, I think he’ll live..” She japes. Erik reaches up and clasps her hand.

“What _a pity_ that is…” He capers with a smile. Kissing the back of her hand. She softened then, from the hard, no-nonense nurse, morphing back into his sweet, even-tempered, friend, once more. She clutched his hand tight. “Though allow me to say _how sorry_ I am _you_ got caught up in this sordid mess.” She spoke with a grim face. Then turned across to Julian. “I’m so sorry, to the both of you. I’d no right involving you both in this. If Henry had hurt you more, I’d have been costing Julian _the love_ of his _lif- friend_ …” She intercepts, for anyone listening in beyond the curtain. Her face was pinched and worried, she looked ashamed. Julian reached forwards, and took both her hands in his, having set his hat and gloves aside.

“My _darling Vianne…._ You and Sharpe are _together now yes?”_  She nods. “…And neither of you came to any _sufficient harm?”_ Again, she answers with a small and weak _‘no.’_  “Those _lovely, sweet,_ children of yours are safe and happy? Sound as a bell?” He asks. She smiles. “Then isn’t _all that_ worth this _stubborn lump_ …” He gestured, jerking his head toward Erik who began to look mildly irritated at his partners words. “..getting a trifling _bump_ to the head?” He asked with the world’s kindest smile. His eyes were glittering in mirth. He _truly was_ a mesmerising beauty. Adonis, or David, could not even compare with this man when he smiled.

“I feel so cared after…” Erik glared drily at Julian, as he flicked open his paper and began to read. “Hush you..” Julian smiles. Patting his leg softly. “You’ve no grounds on which to complain Harriden. Doctor said you’ll be home in a few days. Then maybe you can stop _that ruddy dog_ of yours chewing my very expensive, Selfridges slippers the _instant_ I leave him alone.” Julian chides. Though she was privy to the love, _tangible_ , in the air between them. Vianne couldn’t help but smile in mirth at that.

 “You and Albert _aren’t compatible_?” She asks.

“Like _a cat_ and a _canary_ …” Julian finished. “I don’t _know_ how you and that intemperate, _miserable beast_ get along…”

“You have no soul if you cannot have affection for _that dog._ He is the sweetest animal in the world.” Erik held firm. Julian rolled his eyes, exhaling his frustration. “I suppose I have to feel sorry for you, in your state, bruised all over like a battered peach?” Julian supposed. Erik smiled, ignoring him over the brim of his paper. He said nothing but a staccato “ _Absolutely_.” And then carried on reading.

“You must feel better if you’re starting to bicker with me, dear heart.” Julian adds. Vianne remembered her convalescent gift for Erik, and brings round the wicker basket and lays it down with a thump, it bounced heavily on the bed. And she unveiled the cloth that shielded its contents.

“Speaking of _feeling better_ …” Vianne started, she brought round the paper wrapped, golden yellow roses she had carried in and handed them across to Erik, who lowered his newspaper to take them, smiling kindly. “Your one and only _spec_ of indulgence.” She smiles, ribbing him, just like all the times he used to _do to her_ when she’d bring wrapped bunches to put in their joint office in the lecture hall.

She then turned back to the basket, and brought out what else she’d brought him. “Your favourite, a stout, steak and mushroom pie from Denham’s on Willoughby Street.” She handed across, still warm, a box with a sticker on from the butchers shop. The smell of buttery pastry, and the thick, rich scent of meat all made their mouths water. “Also, Thomas sends his regards, along with the finest bottle of single malt he could get his hands on. To _thank you_ for trying your _utmost best_ to keep me safe. And he says if he can ever do you _any small, single favour_ , he is _eternally_ in your debt. _The both of you.”_ She informs them, Handing Julian the expensive bottle of spirits. He took it gratefully, smiling in acceptance of the gift, and the pledge. Next she brought forth a bag bursting full of liquorice, a small parcel, containing a couple of sticky, cream buns. And next was a stack of medical journals for him to flick through, aswell as three, new leather bound copies of Dickens for him to go through. He’d told her he _always_ wanted the books, but never _had time_ to sit and read them. Now, she handed them to him.

“I should think you have _all the time_ in the world to peruse these now, Erik. With all that idle time you’ll be having off to recuperate. _And If_   I so much _as hear_ you’re _even thinking_ of returning to _work before_ you’re deemed fit, you shall have a _very furious_ , _pregnant, me_ , to deal with. Which will be somewhat of a _ferocious force_ , indeed.” She promises.

Erik’s face lightens at her confession, but he didn’t seem wholly surprised. Julian, however, swooped her up into a big, squeezing hug, wishing her joy and smiling, offering her his handkerchief so she could wipe away her tears of joy. He had noticed she wasn’t her usual self when she saw Roses body. Her throwing her guts up gave him a sense that her time spent with her ex these past few weeks attributed to something she never thought she’d be again. He’d never said, but the thought had made a home, and there was no _killing_ it, nor _silencing_ it after it had. She had missed her courses, this month, and the last, but she attributed that to the stress of her situation. _But, obviously_ , that could not be so. She had nausea most mornings, fatigue, and chest tenderness. It all became clear and obvious when she thought of the impossible diagnosis for such symptoms.

“I’m delighted for you, _Liebling_. And for Thomas too...” He smiles, sitting up, splaying his arms open, and folding her into a hug. When he let her go, he squeezed her hand tight as a good friend would at such happy news. But she noticed there was something more he wasn’t saying. “I must confess, I myself, did a little digging…” He told her. She looked intrigued.

“You mentioned after Arthurs birth, that Julia… that you sustained blood loss. And to stem it, you said, they told you they performed a hysterectomy.” Erik spoke slowly, explaining. She frowned, confused. He reached for his bedside cabinet, flipped open the door, and reached inside. “I had this sent from.. Kent… the place has been closed for six months now, so it took _a bit_ of legwork to get the file from the record archives… _but_ …” He brought out a musty paper file. “Oakhampton, was a crooked, bent place. Run by inexperienced doctors, and staff that were years out of date with training. So, grease the right palms, _and anyone_ could… _sway…_ the way a patients was cared for…” He told her, she took the file from him and flipped it open, studying its frontpage contents. “Forgive me, _but I’ve read it_ …”

She looked up at him. “You went through _all that_ , to get _this_ for me?” She asked, incredulously. She’d never seen Erik look bashful. But _he did now._

“It says, in that file, that the billpayer, _your Uncle_ , I think, _paid_ the doctor and nurses to tell you, that they’d performed a _full removal_ of the womb, when in fact, they _had not_.” He informs her. “He wanted you to believe, that you could _never have_ another child. He didn’t want to risk you conceiving another..” Erik told her. She nods. Relieved to _finally know_ what had been done to her. _Obviously,_ _they had lied to her at Oakhampton about what procedure was performed_. She knew that much from _the second_ she believed herself to be expecting again. But it was the not knowing that _wounded her,_ like they had robbed her of her dignity, and denied her the right to know what had been done to her own body. And it was the sorrow of mourning after something she believed she’d never have again. All the while when Henry had been banging on about their children, she never wanted to let him near her, _intimately_ , in case he found out she was baron. She didn’t want to risk his wrath, or go near the sore subject of children. She wanted to retreat from that. But then, Thomas came to her, and she just unfurled, it was weak, and stupid, she knew, but she _melted for him_. _Always had, and always would._

When she knew for certain she was with child again, not just this fortnight gone, she could s _carce believe it._ She doubted it,   _of course,_ she quashed it, because she believed her idiotic brain was making mountains of her hopes, when the hard fact of impossibility and reality could _tear it all down_ , hurting her worse than ever before. She was pragmatic _, so,_ one day, after helping Erik, she’d tottered along to a discreet, back-alley, family planning clinic, payed a guinea to have the test, and they confirmed her elations. As she sat in a windowless, airless room. She was given the most surprising, altering piece of news of her life. _Another baby_. Of course, she didn’t let out a _peep_ of the notion until the worst was over. Her secret was kept from everyone, _until she slipped up in front of Erik,_ when she saw Rose in the mortuary. They both knew then, unspoken, that there was more to her being ill than shock. _But they didn’t say a thing. Because that’s why Erik escorted her home that night. That was why he took the blow to the head. Because he was valiantly trying to save a pregnant woman from harm._

“That’s _despicable._ Your _own relative_ did such a thing…”  Julian stated, unable to _believe it._

 _“He_ was the one, who was, trying _to hurt me_. Apparently, _he felt_ it’s what I _deserved.”_ She told them both. “Henry was _in_ on it too. They wanted _no more_ from me than _my money_. Trying to marry me to someone amenable didn’t work, they tried to take it by force. _Little did they know,_ They made the mistake of thinking that _as soon_ as I found that I was expecting Julia and Arthur, I settled my father’s inheritance on them….But, as a matter of fact, I hadn’t _touched_ my father’s fortune. So, by law, the way the document is worded, it is left to the _next of kin_. So, all that money, in its _entirety,_ is, _by right,_ now, in _Julia and Arthurs name_. They _could never_ have touched it. _Not even_ in the event of mine, or Thomas’s, demise. In such, _grim,_ circumstances, I had it settled that every penny would go to St. Anthony’s. Hector assumed I was _empty headed_ when it came to money…” She told them. Erik grinned at her.

“You’re a _clever, clever_ girl…” He smiles. “There is _more_ to you than they deigned to presume. I knew that from _the minute_ I met you, my darling. I had to watch you suffer, doubting yourself, in misery and agony with St. Clair. When you were, _and are still_ , the one woman I knew, _who never_ needed a man to rely or depend on. _You are your own_. You proved them wrong Vianne, and they paid _the ultimate_ price for it. For their treachery of you.” He added. Julian looked proud of her too. She smoothed out a crease in the bedsheet. He was right, they had. She buried the dark, rotten secret of wondering what had happened to Henry, somewhere isolated

“Thankyou. Erik. Julian. For, being such good friend’s to me. I can’t tell you how much you both, lightened a _very dark_ time in my life. I’m monstrously glad it’s over now. _No one else_ will get hurt because of my past. It’s an odd sensation to me, but now, I’m actually _looking forward_ to what is to come.” She smiles.

“I _must ask_ …” Erik interjected. “ _Did you ever_ think Sharpe would come and take you back _again?”_ He enquired, as a friend would for their dearest ones affections. She thought for a moment, to herself, and then she smiled, biting her lip, before she answered.

“I think.. secretly, _deep, deep_ down, _I always yearned for it._ Always held a _vain shred_ of hope for it. Wondered what being his wife, would be like. Wonder _how it would be_ to see him once more. _Love him, talk to him, kiss him_ again. Of course, I think back on how we met, and, I know, _now,_ in the time we were apart, it was as if we grew to _be strangers_ again. We both _changed so much,_ motherhood remoulded me, and success changed him. Both for _the better_. I think. I wouldn’t change being a mother _for the world_ , and when I see how much he adores being a father to them, I know he _wouldn’t either._ Life isn’t pretty, but, maybe, we both can _finally_ get our chance at our happiness.” She explained. “I certainly feel I’ve _paid for waiting on it in kind..”_ She adds.

“It’s beyond _nice,_ to see you so happy.” Julian spoke up. “There’s _no single soul_ on earth, who deserves their joviality, more than you do, James.” He beams. Happy for her.

“I’m pleased to report, it’s a _wonderful change_ from being a dreaded fiancé of a terrible man.” She smiled. Erik and Julian saw in her then, something they’d never realised before. _How bright her smile was, when she didn’t have apprehension and fear, simmering in her eyes._ Unencumbered from the weight of her sorrow, her true happiness shone through. And it was like seeing a flower blooming _. A beautiful, rare flower, the name of which they’d both never know._ The darkness which had shrouded her life for those miserable years lifted, and she was happy _never_ to go back into the dark again.

 _“Oh_ , and before I forget…” She remembers, reaching into the bottom of the basket, she pulled out two, crumpled, messily drawn on, pieces of paper. Children’s scribbles were daggered across the page in wobbly pencil. It was _no, fine, artwork, of course_ , but the sentiment behind it was sweet. She handed them over to Erik. “They wanted to wish you a ‘ _get well soon’,_ too.” She grins. Erik takes them, admiring the shape of the inconceivable scrawls. “I _shall treasure_ them, as their dear _god-papa_.” Erik beamed.

“I don’t know if now’s the time to say, _but, I will_  be wanting to acquire your god-parenting skills once again for _the next one_.” Vianne asked them both. Hushed, of course, for the sake of their privacy. Thin curtains didn’t hide noise, for all their virtues.

“ _How_ can we resist?” Julian spoke, accepting. She stood, leaning over to kiss the both of them on the cheek, and giving them a hug a piece. She whispered in Erik’s ear when she hugged him gently.

 _“You get well. Or you’ll answer to me, Harriden.”_ She urges. He hugs her back, muttering his obedience to her wish. She turned and embraces Julian, who wished her congratulations, once again. She smiled as she pulled on her coat, and secured her hat once more. She smiled at two of her closest friends, tucking the file Erik had given her, safely away in the basket, covering it up. She stood at the end of the bed, fixing her gloves before she headed out of doors.

“Send your man, _our love_.” Julian teased politely. She grinned.

 _“Anything_ for my dearly devoted godparents…”  She smiles, waving goodbye before she headed home. After all, she couldn’t wait, full well knowing, this time, she had three, wonderful, beautiful people to head home too.

She beamed, for the entire cab ride home. Safe to say, the driver thought her a _perfectly mad simpleton._

 

_~_

 

_~_


	25. Ours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; 1000 Years from Today - The Beloved

 

~

 

Arriving home that night after her day of paying calls and other such labours, Vianne noticed, for the first time - in what felt like an _awfully long time_ \- that as the cab pulled up to the familiar stretch of grey pavement outside her house, that she actually felt _pleased_ \- giddy even - to be coming back here.

Her heart brimming with golden, sunshine coloured joy, on seeing the merry candlelight filling the windows, as opposed to a dark, silent house. She liked beyond words that there would be a fire in the hearth, crackling away. The rich scent of a wonderful dinner permeating the air from the kitchens below. She found herself idly wondering if Thomas would have the gramophone scratching and softly crooning a warbled melody of some husky voiced, exotic songstress. Caressing the air of the parlour like audible silk. She’d walk in, and find him sat, facing away from her, so she could admire the strong profile, and that roguishly long inky hair. He’d be sprawled on the settee like a resting panther, a whiskey night cap already in his clutch, as he flicked idly through a book, waiting upon her return.

Her thoughts drifting evermore over visions of her lover, her small family, her children, as she clambered down from the cab with a _stupid_ grin on her face. She was eager to go and kiss her beautiful children goodnight, stroke the silk of their hair. Watch the rosiness of their cheeks as they settled abed to their dreams. She could _almost smell_ the warm, clean scent of their youthful skin as she would press kisses to each of their foreheads. She realised as she mounted the pavement and sprung up the steps to the front door, that she was smiling like she’d lost her senses. Shuffling her nurses bag into her left, she twisted the doorknob with her right. Stepping into the warm ambience of the warmly lit foyer.

She still found that though her meditations had albeit briefly drifted over her children, her two little menaces, and the one _yet_ to come, in the dark of night, she recognised this now as _hers_ and _her ex-husbands_ time together. It was with their twins put to bed, the house empty, and Jeanie having retired for the night, that the remainder of the evening shifted into finally being _theirs_.

Sharing intimacies, touches, sipping port or whiskey in the front parlour, lounging into one another, relaxing. She’d pull off her pinching boots, and unbutton her suffocating collar. Thomas would do the same, propriety was shed, and two lovers fondly relaxed in one another’s presence, watching the fire blaze, and talking. Telling the other about their day. Or saying nothing whatsoever, because they simply _didn’t need to_. Some nights, more often than not, the torment of being apart all day grew to be _too unbearable_ for her lover, and more than once she found herself ushered into the foyer, greeted with a yearning kiss, as her coat was stripped from her, by _hot_ , greedy hands of his, and before she could speak words of greeting, she was sharply tugged into his arms and whisked away upstairs to bed, as if they were newlyweds making love for the first time. Urgent greediness led them into each other’s arms, and lust and pleasure followed _very shortly after._

One night last week, she’d practically been thrown over _his shoulder_ and led merrily away so he could entomb them in their bedchamber and reunite his lips between her thighs before she’d even set foot across the threshold.

She remembered it, _vividly_. Pressed against the cool wall of her bedroom, he was on his knees before her before she could register it, mouthing greedily up her thighs and taking her hips in his hands, his lips attaching themselves skilfully to her sex. He hooked her ample thigh over his shoulder, and she tangles her hand in strands of that soft, onyx mane. Unable to watch the whites of his eyes glimmer up at her in the dark of the bedroom as he watched her throw her head back to moan his name.

He’d suckled small kisses, love bites, to the silk of her sensitive inner thighs, alternating between sucking her beautiful labia into his mouth, parting down the  centre of her sex with his strong tongue, flicking and lapping at her clit, and softly nuzzling her thighs, wet from his mouth. She feels him smile as she stutters for breath. He offered a crude whisper between her legs that seeing her in her nurses uniform always did _do things_ to him. She found herself chuckling before he resumed his ministrations, and all laughter died as was replaced with _much_ lust.

Later on in the evening, as she had been _so swiftly_ gravitated straight from the foyer, into bed, she awoke much later to a groaning gurgling stomach, _so loud_ was it, in fact, that it woke her slumbering bed mate too. There was only one thing for it. Thomas surmised with a sidewards smirk. They threw on their dressing gowns, and snuck down to the kitchens like wayward children wary of getting caught being rowdy past their curfew.

They sat in the parlour that night, drinking wine by candlelight, and eating a midnight feast of cold meats, bread, fruit, chutney and cheeses. Drunk, _not off the wine_ , but at the giddiness of being absolutely childish and ridiculously greedy with one another. They fed each other bits of their delightful meal off one anothers fingers. She felt sure to melt at how he teasingly held her offered hand up to his mouth, taking the sweet, plump fig she held for him, between his teeth, licking her fingers, directing a _most salacious_ wink at her. Her cheeks flushed up to her hairline, she was sure. She took note of his flirtations, as he held out a plump strawberry to her. She tilted her head. Slowly leaning up and devouring it. Chewing slowly, she mentioned how delicious it was. Watching his eyes darken and he looked like the devil himself the way he smirked. The sickeningly-in-love fools they were, after they ate, they danced, barefoot, in moonlight, on the antique rug, bathed in starlight from the open window.

Swaying to an invisible waltz. Thomas nuzzled his face into his wife’s bare neck, kissing the pools of moonlight that collected in the dip between her clavicle and her shoulder, pulling her nightdress out of his way. He’d have _no obstacle_ standing between his lips and her silken skin. She held the back of his head. Folding a loving hand up under his arm, stroking across his shoulder blade as she lets herself hold onto this man. _Her man_. The one she couldn’t _wait_ to wake up and see each morning, snoozing on the pillow opposite her own. Thomas breathed in deep the scent of her at her neck. Her perfume, her skin. The essence of her drove him _mad_ with longing. And the fact she was carrying his third child, made him smile like a _giddy fool._ And this time, he’d part heaven and earth to be by her side. Because he had let her know, _as his penance_ , there was _no second_ of her blossoming motherhood that he would miss.

 _Tonight_ , as she steps inside her home, it is not the longing grasp of a lusting lover that greets her. But the gentle greeting of her maid, Jeanie. With stacks of linen folded in her arms. Which she places down on the middle hallway table, to help her Mistress. As Vianne unbuttoned and shrugged off her coat off her shoulders. Jeanie moved to help her. Noticing how tired she looked. But was too polite to say so.  

“Busy day, _Ma’am?”_ She asks. Vianne smiled, gently resting her eyes. Jeanie’s soft, north Yorkshire accent was such a calming sound to her. It _soothes_ her, she realised. Her maid folded her coat over her arm, and took her hat. Vianne audibly sighed with relief, sliding the hat pin out from her thick hair. Which was starting to ache with a dull pain at the roots, from being twisted up and off her face so harshly, and for so long.

“Not _too_. Jeanie.” She smiles. Her maid can see how this makes the bags under eyes lessen a little with the force of her bone weary smile.

She had been on the district round today. Traipsing hither and dither across London, palpating stiff limbs, administering ointment, and changing dressings. Visiting a spectrum of patients, from a stuffy Duke, sat alone, in an absolutely echoing townhouse recovering from knee surgery, to a lowly docker, wounded in an accident at work, requiring dressing changes, and living in poverty and filth, ensconced in a room with five other families, all sharing the same, grubby air. No wonder disease was rife where poverty thrived.

She narrowly missed placing her heel down on a _scurrying rat_ as she left. Unfortunately, she’d seen the like before. Children no more older than her own, batting rats off their younger siblings as they slept. It sometimes astounded her that she could travel _so seamlessly_ between two very different worlds. One, where everything was polished, ordered, and dripping elegance and decorum. And having less than three footmen was seen as the _end of the world,_ and the next thing, she’d be crammed in some room that barely out measured a cupboard, treating someone who belonged to a family of twelve, dosing their children with gin so they didn’t cry out in hunger as they struggled to make ends meet. It amazed her that she kept _sane_ some days. Returning home was her _tonic_. Stripping herself of her uniform and _washing away_ her day was to put her grievances of her job aside, and to focus solely on those who had missed her all day long.

She peered through to the dining room, seeing the walnut table polished, gleaming. _Empty_. As was the parlour she peered into. She let herself smile, the gramophone did indeed coo a sultry melody into the air. And on the end table there was a half nursed glass of liquor left unattended. But _no sign_ of her inky hair lover anywhere in sight. Seeing her mistress search, Jeanie put her mind at ease...

“He’s upstairs. _M’am_. Insisted himself on bath duty and then reading a bedtime story to Master Arthur and Miss Julia.” She explained, hanging up her coat, and hat. And placing her medical bag upon the side table.

Vianne smiled. Every spare moment Thomas could snatch with his children he _clamoured for_. He couldn’t get enough. _He was a besotted man_. She rubbed over her eyes, summoning the last fragments in her weary body to go upstairs and kiss her children and their father. She pointed to the linens on the table.

“ _Allow me_ , I’m going up. You get yourself off to bed now, Jeanie. We can manage..” Vianne smiled. Jeanie looked ready to protest as she slowly handed across the stack of freshly laundered bedsheets. Vianne wore her sharpest look. And her maid subsequently offered her thank’s and bid her a good evening. A waft of clean, warm soap and sun bleached whites wafted over Vianne’s nose as she clutched the washing, and began her ascent above stairs.

She padded softly along the landing, placed the sheets away, pausing only to let down her hair, so it tumbled down her back, toeing off her impossibly pinching boots, and letting her dress fall undone to her sternum, stripping away the strict formality of her uniform, here, it was unnecessary and unneeded. In her home, she was a mother, and a lover. She wasn’t required to be _anything_ more.

She then made a beeline straight for the nursery. Coming closer to the door, she could hear no noise come from within, save for the tinkling, twinkling lull of their music box twirling the melody _‘lavenders blue’_ to jangle through the air. She pushed open the ajar door, stepping into the unusually tidy space of her children’s nursery. Her feet making no noise, swallowed up into the thick carpets. The scent of clean, bathed skin lingering in the air along with the lullaby music, as a ballerina twirled in place in the wooden music box her lover had made for the both of them, and gifted them with, just yesterday. The walls were a buttercup yellow made softer by the two bedside lamps that cast honey gold pools up each wall, brightening the cosy space. She saw that Jeanie’s influence as a nursemaid was in the way each doll, teddy and game sat dutifully on the top of their toyboxes, at the end of each small bed, as if awaiting further instruction.

Her children weren’t, as she expected to find them, huddled under their eiderdowns, as little snoozing lumps. Merrily warm, ensconced snug, in their little beds, but rather, her smile tugged wide, her heart lurching in love as she saw where they were _instead_...

The reason the room was so quiet, was all because the three inhabitants were _sleeping peacefully_ , all heaped into the same rocking chair.

The lean, long, tall body of her lover looked so comically stretched out, legs kicked out, resting, his head tilted all the way to the side, arms clutching his twins. Thomas’s head lolled onto the head of his son, who bore the _exact same_ shade of inky hair, tucked, snoozing softly under his father’s protective arm. Curled onto his lap, his little chubby knees blanketed by the book that they had obviously been enjoying before sleep gently took them all.

Whilst Arthur was cuddled to Thomas’s left arm, clad in his pearly white nightclothes. Julia was snuggled into his right side, she too, fast asleep in her little nightie. Sucking on her thumb, her ginger hair mussed, pushed up against Thomas’s waistcoat, her favourite blue blanket draped between her legs, nuzzled into the shape of her fathers chest. She _savours_ the sight of her small little family for a moment, snoring gently in one sleeping heap. Silently, her stockinged feet pad softly across the small room, and she reached for the forgotten novel of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit which sat slanted across Thomas’s lap. She gently seized it, placed the bookmark on their discarded page. And placing it back on the dresser. Seeing still, no one had so much as stirred.

 _Unable_ to help herself, enchanted with the pale, sleeping face of him. His closed lids casting spidery shadows down each of his carved cheeks. Down over that red scar of his, which was as vivid as always. His hair flopping down his pale forehead. She reaches a hand across, and gently touches his cheek, cupping it, her hand was cool compared to the hot silk of his unshaven jaw. She lowers her lashes, looking at his lips, before she leans forwards and softly kisses him. There is a second, _just a second_ , of unresponsiveness, before she feels his breath stutter to skip through his chest, and he awakes, grumbling a soft moan into her lips. When she opens her eyes and pulls back, she sees his lips twitch into a sleepy smile, and his eyes, hooded, spring open to see her.

“You’re _home_ …” He mumbles sleepily. His tone warm and pleased. His eyes and smile both loving as they rested on her face. Drinking her in. He moved to take her in his arms, but found them _encumbered_ by his two sleeping toddlers. Then he remembers how he’d been halfway through Peter escaping Mr McGregor’s garden when he’d dozed off.

She smiled at his attempts to move. Wordlessly she helps him. Gently, so as not to wake him, she prizes Arthur from his father’s embrace, feeling him shift, she settled him onto her hip. Kisses his hair. Smelling the warm, pink aroma of his clean, freshly bathed head. He gurgles sleepily, curling into his mother, His fingers tangling in a coil of her hair. Vianne holds him for a second. Closing her eyes, hugging her beautiful son. Before she whispers a soft, ‘ _sweet dreams my darling’_ onto his head. As if her words would sink in, and become true. She lowers him into the cocoon of his bed, seeing that he cuddled at once up to his toy rabbit. Huddled into a little, snoring ball. Snuffling in his sleep. She pulls up his covers to keep him warm, smoothed away any creases in the patchwork blanket at the bottom of his bed. And switches off the light by his head. Throwing his half of the room into soft, gentle darkness, lit from outside by a warming streetlamp. It was smoggy tonight, the moon couldn’t be seen.

She turned back to him, watching him come to his full height, his limbs clicking and stretching back into place. He cradles his gorgeous daughter gently, as if she was made of porcelain, liable to shatter. He pecks a long kiss into her hair, before he too settles her into her own bed, across the room from her twin. Vianne watches Julia’s eyes flutter sleepily open, watching her father as he tucked her into bed. He made sure her blanket that she was never without was tucked into her hold. As he pulled the covers over her.

Her eyes blinked shut again, half her face hidden, nuzzling into her second favourite teddy as she went wordlessly back to sleep. Thomas lingered for a second, sat on the very edge of her bed, his eyes fondly watching her, two long fingers stroking the soft hair back on her head in a repeated motion that Vianne recognised was the same notion he’d do to her when she _couldn’t sleep._ Softly stroke over her forehead with those calloused fingers until she stopped thinking, and succumbed to sleep.

She crossed, and kissed her daughter, ushering a sweet goodnight, as she turned off the second bedside light. Plunging the room completely now into comfortable darkness. The only light now coming from the hall outside on the landing. Thomas’s hand found her hip through her dress, and silently, both mother and father crept from the nursery, leaving the lullaby to twinkle away to nothing and leave their treasures to their dreams. Thomas exits first, and Vianne pulls the door almost closed behind her. Thomas insisted most seriously on not shutting them in their room, _she knew why_ , and _always_ ensured she left the door ajar for them. For him too.

Stepping out into the half-light, half dark of the landing, she turns to speak to Thomas, but finds herself – _not so rudely_ – cut off as she is pressed back into the wall by the nursery door and kissed so savagely, she has to clutch onto his arms for support. She wraps herself around him as he does her, revelling in his lover being in his arms after a long day of being parted from her. Bringing her thigh up over his hip to feel closer. When he feels her bust press softly into him, something like a _growl_ escapes his lips, swallowed into her mouth as he cups her face. She holds him back just as passionately, frowning, breaking the kiss when her hands find his front, where his waistcoat was soggy in patches, to the touch. She smiles, which makes it difficult for him to continue kissing her. He pulls away, pressing his forehead against her own, arcing down over her.

“Why are you _all wet?”_ She asks in a breathy laugh as his clever fingers rub her neck. Stealing some of the aching tiredness from her body. His fingers felt _magical_. Where they touched, leaving nothing but pleasure and tingling skin in his wake. Her palm fell flat to his hard, muscular sternum, feeling the heat from his skin burn through his clothes to her touch. He raised a single, dark brow, arcing it at her.

“ _I_ was on bath time duty. And _evidently_ , not content to let me miss out on it, Julia finds it rather hilarious to render _me_ sopping wet _also_.” He explains. She bit her lip and smiled at the visual of Thomas letting his two year old drench him with bathwater. He’d wear that expression of genteel glare. Water dripping from that elegant scarred face as Julia shrieked with laughter at his ploy. His eyes narrowing as his smile grew. _Now_ , He tilts his head, his hand slinking up to tangle in her hair and his fingers flexed and scraped through her scalp, easing her the aching tip of her roots. It was as if she came with a set of instructions, and he had read them, and she had not, so he could know her by heart. _He knew exactly where to touch to ease her aches and pains after a gruelling day. It was uncanny._ Her head fell back to the wall as she groaned in bliss.

“Night cap?” He asks her wearily, before his eyes grow all the darker, filling with lust, and he lifts her skirts and makes love to her, right here. Rutting her up against the wall like a primal animal. On the landing _three feet away_ from his sleeping children.

Before he does that, he helps lead her downstairs. Ignoring the clamouring’s of his ardour to take her. When he led her past her open bedroom door, his arousal twinges, wanting to guide her in there throw her to the bed, and deliver upon them both an orgasm that would have them falling sodden, sweaty and exhausted straight to sleep after they reached completion. As they walk down the stairs, his big hand paws at her rounded belly, seven weeks gone now and no one could even tell she was carrying his third.

Only close intimates had the pleasure of knowing she was in the family way once more. It was _mad_ , how he reacted whenever he remembered she was, in time, going to grow curvier, softer, _lovelier,_ with his next baby. She assured him that her body in pregnancy _wasn’t quite_ the rose-tinted, happy, glowing example of motherhood that he may have been led to believe. From what she could remember, past pains and experience aside, it left her sick as a pup and bone weary most days in the first trimester. Thomas had merely smiled meekly and said he’d be there for her _every second._ Holding the sick bucket if needs be. She was learning quick that he meant it. He took days off work, as he’d _never_ done before, simply to stay with her and read every book on motherhood he could lay his hands on. She had to drag the book out of his hands come some nights, for he was _far too_ engrossed in worry, sat up reading til the small hours, bleating at her the worst examples and remedies from over fluffed textbooks. One night she pulled it from his hands and rolled onto him, kissing him just to get him to be quiet with his damned fussing. She couldn’t blame him _overmuch,_ he was doing his best to be involved, with a hands on approach. She could _never_ begrudge him that. _Not ever again._

They stumbled into the parlour, Thomas groaning as he heaved himself onto the settee. Flopping back into it, moaning gratefully as he palpated his neck. Having grown stiff, unsupported, from his slumber upstairs in the twins hard rocking chair. Vianne crossed to the side table and poured herself a small glass of weak sherry from the decanter.

Erik had informed her a small tipple every now and then would do _no harm_ to the babe. She was sure as this child was of hers and Thomas’s siring, then it was sure to be made of pretty stern stuff, such stern stuff,  that no meagre sip of weak sherry could cause much harm. She sipped it, and it set a merry, buzzing fire down in her weary bones.

Thomas opened his legs, and tugged her down to thump inelegantly down, pressing her back into his chest. Wrapping an arm around her, kissing her neck. His nose landing in the nest of her coppery hair. He wrapped her close, folding her body into his own. They stared into the dwindling flames of the fire, sipping their beverages, and relaxing in the aura of their shared tiredness. The only sounds coming to permeate their loving silence, was the sound of London nightlife chattering and rumbling by on the street outside, and the dripping, drizzling rain that had begun to knife slanted droplets of water down the windowpanes. Thomas necked his drink back in one gulp, wet his lips, and then said the thing that had been lingering on his tongue for a couple of weeks now.

“I’ve been _thinking_..” He groaned. As Vianne murmured her assent. Sipping her tipple. Feeling his hands come stroking up her neck, gathering her hair, and draping it to the side, so he could better see her pale, sculpted neck. His fingers dancing a stroking, relaxing massage onto her skin as she laid her head back to meet his chest, listening to his heart thump away in his ribs, his hand skimmed over the curve of her shoulder as he continued to speak.

“What would you say to the idea of us, _moving away_ from London?” He began slowly. When he finished speaking she let the words hang for a second in the air, tasting them.

“I’d say, what about your job, the foundry, what about my helping Erik…” She said enquiring as to his answer, testing the waters.

“Surely, Vianne, you’ll be taking maternity leave once _this_ little one grows bigger?” He asks her. When speaking of their third, his hand cupped the rounded swell of her tummy under her clothes.

“Of course.” She stated. The Twins birth had been so painfully traumatic, that as far as was possible, she wanted _this_ one to go as carefree and as relaxed as childbirth could be.

She’d _be flogged_ by matron were she caught being in the family way, and trying to maintain her meagre assistants role to help Erik. Davis would say she was ‘ _infecting the young innocence of probationers and nurses. Firstly for being involved with a man, and secondly for living in sin, with said man, and carrying his child,’_   _Why_. She’d be chased from the London with torches and pitchforks for such a heinous misdeed. She’d never gain as much a kind _word of a reference_ , let alone a letter, she’d be dismissed without favour, and would never find work as a nurse whilst she lived and breathed on this earth again. She cursed to the heavens that nurses were strictly to be seen as virginal paragons of virtue. One _whiff_ of flirtation with a man and they were toppled from the pedestal their profession placed on them. She’d first hand seen probationers dismissed for less.

She’d kept her history from her colleagues, save for Erik. So far as they knew, she was a single woman. She had intended to take leave from her position, claiming going abroad to ‘ _do the continent’_ as was deemed fashionable. Returning six months later as if nothing had changed. _Except everything would have_. They weren’t to know she was going home to a secret lover, and three children. Spending her nights in bed, finding pleasure in the arms of a man, and spending her days off taking her children to the park to play. And she intended to keep it that way. She was wary of Thomas’s reaction to her plan, worried that her keeping him in the dark would offend him in some manner. As if she was ashamed of him. But he understood. Her profession _was sacred_ to her, and _he would not_ rob her of the pleasures of it – as another, _certain man_ , would have done. Keeping her at home instead as _a broodmare_. No more than a vessel for his heir, and a piggy bank for his black desires to bed half the vain heiresses in London. His mind did flutter to thoughts of _him_ every once in a while. Somewhere rotten in him that had never died, somewhere dark, where he never went, he found himself thinking, _of how he ended up. What became of him._ But he pushed the revolting thought away. Locking it back in the dark place where it had dwelled from. That man _didn’t deserve_ his consideration, not when he had treated Vianne so.

 _“I don’t_ want you working like a pack-horse up to your sixth month, my darling. You’ll place undue stress on yourself, _and_ the baby. And _I cannot_ and _will not_ sit idly by allow you to be ordered here and there across London in going into _unseemly_ living conditions.” He warns. She told him about the surroundings of poverty her job took her too. The other week, she told him the story about rats swarming around a baby’s cot until she shooed them away, and he paled notably. She twists about in his arms. Turning onto her right side, pressing a kiss to his cheek. Curling up into his lean chest. Feeling the hard, hotness of his musculature underneath her cheek.

“ _I’ve no desire_ to be traipsing round London in my sixth month. By then I’ll be a waddling, tired old wretch, with aching feet, puffy ankles and mood swings.” She assures him. With a smile, raking a hand through his hair as he lazily looked at her with love.

 _“Good.”_ Thomas groans. His arm stroking up over her hip, pressing her body close to his. “Because _I’ll want you_ , at home, feet up. Watching our devious children run rings about their poor, dear, tired father.” He mumbles sleepily. Though he sounded _so very happy._ She chuckled at him. He couldn’t deny, having her body pressed down onto him was making him want to groan in _other ways_ , too.

“You mentioned moving away..” She brought up. “What _did you_ have in mind, Mr Sharpe?” She asks nicely, shutting her eyes, one hand splayed flat against his sternum. His fingers twined through hers, and he leaned back. One elbow behind his head. He too feeling sleepy, and the stupors of the drink he’d taken making his blood feel hot and lazy, as it sluggishly thudded around his body.

“A big, red brick house, covered in wisteria and roses. Surrounded by green, open fields. With a big garden, with tall trees for our little imps to climb up. An orangery for the rainy days where you can hear it patter on the roof. A big garden so I can buy Julia a dog, or a cat, or pony, or _that dragon_ , she’s asked me so doggedly get for her a Christmas present. A shed where I can tinker away in until my lovely children drag me outside to play in the evening sunshine. And most importantly, a big fireplace we can all gather round at night, and have a real Christmas tree at Christmas..” He rambled on. His eyelids were shutting as he imagined his perfect family house that he’d share with her, and their beautiful children. And little no-name to come..

Vianne smiled, feeling the warmth from the fireplace dully caress the side of her face. And then, his warm fingers did. Slipping up her cheek, mapping out the soft silk of her skin. His hooded eyes cracked open, watching her smile in her sleep.

“…and before I forget, a really big, _huge,_ bedroom, with a big soft bed, I can throw you down onto at night, pull your nightdress up, see you perfectly naked, and li-“ He began, but she swiftly cut him off. Though he thought her asleep. _She was tempted to clap a hand over his mouth to stop his filthy words tumbling out._

 _“Thomas!”_ She grumbles, though he could see her cheeks pinken, so he knows she _didn’t truly mind._ He smirks that lopsided smile that made her breath skip.

“Big green, open fields…” She repeats dreamily. Away from rats, and tenements, and poverty. Away from dust and smog. Away from the house she never really, truly saw as home. _Home_ , for her, wasn’t a place. Her home was wherever _he_ was. _Home was being in his arms._ She could _almost_ imagine herself _tasting_ the fresh, untarnished air. Smell the green grass, feel the sun bleach her skin of the impurities that the smog strewn city caused her skin and lungs. _She can’t deny the prospect was thrilling._

“Could we _afford it?”_ She asks. And he smiles at her.

“I could afford Buckingham palace for you, _ten times over_ Vianne. And that’s without dipping into _a penny_ of your fortune…” He made clear. She twisted her head and nuzzled her nose into his chest. Smelling the faint tang of old metal, engine oil and essence of peppermint on his clothes. Aswell as soap that was no doubt pelted at him as he had bathed their mischievous two year olds.

“ _I can’t_ deny the appeal of the notion…” She dreamed. “To be out in _clean air_. Raising the children in the countryside. Surrounded by green and nature in summer. And snow in winter…” she smiles.

“What about our jobs?” She enquires. Thomas smoothed a hand down her upper arm. Loving that this was a dream they could both share.

“The foundry can manage me running it from a distance…” He explains. “Though _I know I can’t_ ask you to so easily give up your patients. And Erik, he’s been _a saviour_ for the both of us…” He explains. She thinks about leaving the London, and though she knows it would sadden her, When she thought about all they had now. She wasn’t a spinster, stood crying in her foyer, at the sight of a dark empty house anymore. She had people who’d missed her when she returned home.

“Though, you must know, I _wouldn’t dream_ of putting you through such upheaval in the midst of a pregnancy.” He informs her. Hugging her close, squeezing her delectable body into him.

“Let’s keep it on our horizons for now…” Vianne asked lovingly. Kissing his chest again. “It can be _our_ something to dream over…” She adds. His eyes slide shut. And he smiles. Picturing that fantasy house behind his eyelids. The green lawn. Vianne strolling in the garden with their new-born in her arms.

 _“Ours.”_ He smiles. Holding his love in his arms. Tasting that word, that _one small_ word, that sounded _very nice_ to him, _indeed._

_~_

 

 


	26. Briarwell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; What Kind of Man - Florence and the Machine
> 
> This little one is an oddity, I admit. It doesn't seem to fall anywhere in the natural order of the story, I wrote it as an extra, but completely forgot about it! It just gives more into Henry/Vianne's side of things, with a jealous Thomas interfering. (a plot I adore, the jealous ex-lover bothering his love and her beau) There's more to follow with this plot line at the house party, and as this story jumps around a lot, I'll include them, then zip back to the present Thomas/Vianne. Oh, and before I go, do me a huge favour, and listen to 'Who would you die for' by Bon Jovi for this chapter... it's very poignant. that's all folkies x and please take care with this chapter. There are triggers for physical/verbal abuse. I don’t wish anyone to proceed unawares.

 

 

~

 

Not for the first time, Vianne sat scrutinizing herself in the looking glass. She and Henry were shortly bound downstairs. The bedroom she sat in was not her own. For they had been counted among close acquaintances of Lord and Lady Hexham, and were subsequently invited, along with many fashionable, upper echelons of Edwardian society, to attend a week long house party out in Kent. For quite the most fashionable event in one’s social calendar. The house, Briarwell, was a charmingly perfect chateau, situated in acres of green fields, with comfortable drawing rooms, and was packed, fit to burst, with ladies and gentleman. Keen, raring for a week of hunting, shooting, and riding for the men. Whilst the women could sketch, walk and gossip away snidely to their hearts content.    

This party was deemed _the_ _most_ un-missable event, held every spring, a prized gathering. And people regarded themselves especially lucky to be invited. She did not reckon herself among that sort of crowd. This was more Henry’s scene than her own. He brushed shoulders with Lord Hexham when they were lads at the same boarding school, so for tonight, he would be among equals. And she, she knew with dread, would be esteemed as the sore thumb. _The outlier_. The heiress who favoured a ward, a nurses uniform, and wounds, more than people of her own ilk. These people were more at home in ballrooms, grand houses and navigating the hazards of being upstanding in  society.

She was about to spend a most torturous week being buffeted and dressed down in sly degradations by nasty young women, and being flirted with or stoutly ignored by dismissive noblemen. She could not deny, was _dreading_ it. And she knew far better than to expect Henry to fight her corner when the ladies were making cutting insults to her, with big smiles on their faces to _better dilute_ their acerbity. She knew that he would _not_ be there to shield her from unfriendly eyes, when men raked over her figure with predatory stares and filthy remarks. And talked about her oddness, _loudly_ , behind her back. But within earshot to better put her in her place.

Tonight, after they arrived, she (not Henry) had suffered a lukewarm greeting from their hosts, and they were both assigned their separate rooms - Henry being in the men’s quarters, they were after all affianced, _and not_ married - after their luggage was taken up, she had bathed, and changed into tonight’s gown. Emerald gossamer over an emerald satin underlay. The thin material ruched and bunched at her upper arms, leaving her shoulders bare, and the cut of the dress cut down low below her shoulder blades. Usually she’d relish a chance to wear this dress. But this eve, she _detested_ it.

Her stomach was tying itself in knots and her mind was fuzzy, _erratic_ , busy with worries. She felt too hot and her corset felt far too tight. She sat at the vanity table, scrutinizing herself so harshly, as the evening wore on, she grew more and more reluctant to move from her seat. She never thought she’d be thankful that the hosts had decided that tonight’s party would be a masquerade event. But the gold mask she chose to wore to cover across her eyes somehow gave her more strength. It bolstered her that she had atleast that small, little thing, to hide behind tonight, for if her bravery shrivelled up and shrunk down inside her. She’d secured the mask on long ago – _with good reason_ – and was just attending her hair, half of it secured up, and half down by her shoulders, drying into wavy curls from her bath an hours previous. She was still fussing and preening, when there came a knock at her door. Without waiting to be invited in, Henry barged through the door regardless.

She met his eyes in the oval looking glass, he came in slowly, looked across at her, twitched a small smile, and shut the door behind him. Crossing the room, bedecked in his white tie and tails, his strides were softened by the thick carpets. Henry had a broad frame. Heavy set shoulders, thick arms, and a wide torso, tapering away to strong legs. He cut a perfect figure of a man. His hair gleamed a rusty russet in the low candlelight of her room. He wore a simple, black damask mask across his eyes, whereas hers was more ornate. A gilded gold, swirling with baroque patterns. He marched across to her, and his hand lands a _strong_ touch on her shoulder, skimming along her skin. _Assessing_ her. _Petting_ her.

“ _That_ dress?” he asks her, his tone degrading, unsure. That little slight that made her confidence falter in no more than two words. Her stomach withered. She never set out to displease him. She knew better than anyone the _consequences_ of her doing such a thing.

“ _I like_ this dress…” She defends. Smoothing a hand over her stomach. Fussing with it, as if idle fixes would make him like it any the more. She watched his eyes flutter, displeased over the way the cut of it so carelessly flaunted her figure. “It’s unsuitably eye-catching. _I_ don’t want any other man drooling over your figure at dinner. In that dress you’ll make some stuffy Duke fantasise about forcing on you his next heir. _One look_ at you in _that dress_ they’ll think you’re a glutton for _male attention_ ” He dismisses cruelly.

“I can change, if you’d _prefer_ …” She says in a small voice. He grunts. Annoyed, but not pressing the situation further.

“If you changed, we’d be rudely _late. I won’t_ have that.” He accepts. Luckily, for her, he let that be. His eyes fell on her figure again.

“Not _that_ necklace.” He speaks up. Unlatching the clatch, and pulling the band of jewels off her throat. Throwing it away, discarded, atop the covers of her made bed. He rifled rudely through her jewellery box, his big fingers raking through her delicate things, selecting another, securing it tight around her throat, tugging her hair roughly out of the way.

“You’ll wear your hair up, _Darling_. _We don’t_ want people saying you’re _vulgar_ to be letting it loose.” He instructs.

She reaches for her hairpins, the flimsy metal skidding about in her gloved hands. She made sure to keep them tied tight on her upper arms tonight, if they slid down, her nasty encounter from the other night would be revealed. She makes work on her hair. Conceding to his rule. He watches her, sat on the end of the bed.

“You seem quiet. More so than usual. Are you not _looking forward_ to tonight?” He asks with an edge in his tone. One that made her realise he was at risk of thinking her ungrateful to be invited for such a soiree. Henry was part of their crowd. He had friends, colleagues, and other doctors to mingle with, and the women _couldn’t_ admire nor flirt with him more. She would be seem as an unnecessary addition on his arm. _An annoyance._

“I’m merely… _nervous_.” She explains. Quick not to rile his temper. “You know me, Henry. This lot downstairs _are not_ my crowd.” She puts gently.

“I don’t like it that you consider yourself more at ease with poor invalids, paupers and working class nurses. When we marry, Vianne. You _will_ have to find yourself comfortable with _‘this lot’_ as you _so maliciously_ put it…” He began.

“Henry, I didn’t mean to sound _spiteful_ …” She speaks back, evenly. Turning round to face him. He sat on the end of her bed. His back ramrod straight. Those dark eyes gazing out at her from the holes in his dark mask. She swallows and when she speaks. Her voice is meagre, and weak.

“I’m _sorry_.” She relents. She didn’t want this to be a battle. It would be hard enough fighting to be civil with everyone downstairs. She needed every ally she could lay her hands on for tonight. “I am, _delighted_ , to be considered eligible enough to warrant an invitation here, amongst your close acquaintance. I’m sure we’ll have a… _a… lovely week.”_  She beams gently. Though her smile felt uncomfortable, meek, and not to mention _forced_.

Henry made a short, sharp noise of displeasure.

“Atleast we’re _out of_ London.” He sighs. “Nice to get away from the shadowy threat of _him_. Lurking round you like a baying dog. Stalking your every move.” Henry growled in displeasure. Her throat closed up with the mention of Thomas. She tugged up her gloves, and swallowed. Her voice unusually thick. How she kept down the cloying lump that had formed in her throat since Henry began speaking _of him_ , she’d _never know._ She turned back around, not facing him. Putting up a façade. Her hands _shook_ as she unstopped a bottle of scent. She could feel the dangerous, heavy, uncomfortably hot weight of his stare burn holes into her back.

“I’m _not_ encouraging him on Henry. Please believe me to be sincere on that.” She relays quickly before her breaking voice betrayed her softness, and her partiality to that man.

Even though she still loathed him, and thinking of his sins made her skin crawl. He held the ability to make her _soften. To weaken_. She didn’t know _how else_ to explain it. Nor how he managed it. She had mourned for her relationship with Thomas. Rotting in a festering, cold sanitorium for months, weeping the grieving tears of a widow. But she wasn’t. She didn’t mourn her escaping Lucille and her odd fascination and flippant nature. One minute they’d be tolerable friends, the next, she was trying to _slit_ her throat. She didn’t mourn that. She did lament over the person she was when she was _with_ Thomas.

He had seen a softness in her. Found something, _kind_ , and _sweet._ And with her departure of him, she felt as if she had left that benevolent, kind heartedness behind. As if it had dried up. And nothing but an _aching shell_ of a woman she now was had taken its place. She passed through her life since, trying every day, to distract herself from her thoughts wandering back over her old life. She focused, with little enthusiasm, on all that her new one would bring. And it had brought _her here_. To people she barely tolerated, who considered her with the same, cold, disinterest in return. With women who sought it as their duty to _mock_ her, and men who either ignored her, or _flirted_ with her. Her life now, Henry was trying to make her see, was going to be _so much more_ than fraternising with paupers and the sick. Their marriage would elevate her to rub elbows with the gentry, noblemen, and titled people with a station.

“I’ll believe that he has given up, when we are wed, and he knows to leave well enough _alone_. I _mean it_ Vianne. He comes near you, or I, again. And there will be _dire_ consequences for that reprobate…” He warned. Her eyes found his in the mirror. They were half agony, half curiosity. And Henry could read them, and the way she had so obviously stilled at hearing his threat.

“Dire?” She asks.

“ _Dire_.” He repeats flatly. Smirking. Nastily. She looks away. Keen to forget it. And the hateful spark in his eyes that told her he’d take pleasure in hurting Thomas to warn him off her.

“ _I’m certain_ he’s given up the idea of wanting to interfere in our relationship _by now_.” She finalises. Wishing that to be the end of it. “I haven’t seen _nor_ heard from him since the night at Lady Sulbrows Ball…” She spoke. Not looking at him as she finished her hair, and went to slide diamonds earrings to sit dangling from her lobes. She hoped those too met with his strict standards.

“You mean the night that left you with another man’s _love bite_ on your neck after you returned to my side?” He asked.

She stopped dead in her actions. Sitting still. Looking fearfully at his reflection behind her. Wary that she had just encouraged _another_ castigation. She didn’t wish to relive what he had done to her by way of punishment for _that infraction_. Thomas had given her a love bite. And Henry had given her marks of _his own_ in return. Her ribs were still aching and bruised _black and blue_ from his chastisement. Her corset pinched, and tears were squeezed from her eyes, tonight, at the pain of it being laced so tightly into it due to that particular injury.

“Need I remind you _how I felt_ about that mishap?” He asked in a low voice.

“You reminded me _plenty enough_ the evening after.” She finishes curtly. She watched him tilt his head. A slight wrinkled frown crowning the space between his brows.

“You’re not suggesting I _enjoyed that_ , are you?” He enquires.

“Good _god, no_.” She speaks. Her voice flat. “That would make you _a monster, Henry_.” She concedes.

He remains silent. Watching her assess her finishing touches. The conversation slowed to a dead halt because of the reminiscing. She couldn’t stand the throttling silence, punctuated only by the sounds of the fire crackling in the hearth.

“We should be heading down.” She adds. Turning about, tugging her skirts out of the way so she could stand up. She straightened her knees, that felt almost _too weak_ to hold her up. She came to her full height, and crossed around the end of the bed. He held out his hand for her, she _flinched lightly,_ before she went to him.  She slid her gloved hand into his, and he tugged her to him, close to the bed, reeling her to drape over his thighs, tucked close into him. His warm hand cupped her neck and throat. Almost gripping, but only just. Letting her know his hold on her was absolute.

“ _Don’t_ be downcast tonight. I’ve a lot of friends here. I don’t need them saying you’re a glum face at the dinner table. You should be very happy to be here. _Lucky even_. And more so, happy to be with _me.”_ He suggests. She strokes a hand down his chest.

“I _am_ happy.” She lies. Or atleast, she was as happy as she felt she deserved to be. “I will act accordingly.” She promises. Kissing his cheek. Secretly, feeling more now like an added embarrassment, than she already did before he entered the room. The old version of her would have recoiled at being so plainly ordered about. But she was _too cautious_ to fight back. She needed him tonight. On her side, against all odds. She was lucky to have a man like Henry. After the altercations of her sordid past, he _was more_ than she deserved.

“I do love you _so very much_ you know, Vianne.” He states seriously. His eyes boring into her own. She meets his gaze, and she nods.

“I know, Henry. And I _heartily_ concur.” She breathes, feeling ultimately, very false. She hoped after they were safe and married, that she could allow herself to love him more. His jealousy of Thomas, or any other man, would melt away, and they could perhaps even, feel relaxed and content in one another’s company. She _longed_ for that day.

“Let’s go down. I promised Merton a drink with him before dinner.” Henry proposed. Setting her on her feet.

She stood, fixing her dress. He kept his hand on her lower back as they crossed her room. Out of the door, and across the landing, when they got to the stairs he loops her arm through his, holding her tightly as they descended the grand imperial stairs to the raucous nature of the house below. Where the evening was just beginning. There was a large, boisterous party of thirty invited to the house. A mix of single and married people alike. In the main parlour, Vianne could hear a comforting gathering, she could hear glasses clink, and Irving Berlin wailed on the scratchy gramophone, she can hear laughter, conversation and the air was rife with the heady scent of fine perfume and fresh roses, lilies and geraniums in place all over the house to showcase Hexham’s vast wealth as a cabinet minister. The lifestyle must be accordingly gaudy to reflect that of his income, Vianne supposed.

She kept hold of Henry’s arm, before he caught the eye of a gaggle of old friends, who shoved a crystal cut tumbler of whisky in his hands. He dropped her arm and joined his friends.

Callous enough as to slide away after relaying her strict instructions which she was to adhere too, on pain of death. Or, in actual fact, on pain of another _nasty set_ of bruises. He kissed her on the cheek before they departed. He shielded her from the sight of the room with his body, the ulterior motive being so that he could grip her wrist tight in his hand. Wrapping his fingers around it, her skin pinching already, but his touch turned to a fierce _grip_ that bit harshly into her skin.

“You flirt with another man. You so much as _look_ at one. I don’t care who he is.  I’ll make you _very, very sorry._ Now mingle, and _be polite_. If I hear you’ve been _anything_ less than courteous. _You know_ what I’ll do. And it’ll start with me getting _very, angry._ You know what happens when I get angry _, darling_.” He forewarns.

She snatches her hand back. Staring at him for a second. Snapping on a false smile, and claiming she needed a drink. She slipped away, watching him roar with laughter, smiling with his friends like he was a different man. She oft wonders _how_ he could be a doctor, so caring for patients, when he could treat her so. _Jekyll and Hyde sprung as a quick comparison to her mind._

She was just heading for a refreshment, when she is accosted by Lady Shackleton. Vianne had met her before, often at socials gatherings and the like. She was also a patroness of the London, where Vianne worked, as if that gave her divine right and omnipotence. If this wasn’t an exercise to deliberately exert her influence and power, then Vianne _didn’t know_ women.

 _This_ woman currently drew a sigh to rise out of her, as Vianne noticed, with horror, she was intending in her direction with purpose.

She was an almost elderly lady, with greying hair fixed in a huge colonial coiffure that sat like a hazy grey cloud of hair atop her head. Vianne would’ve said that it looked like an inconvenient halo, but she knew the woman better than that to call it so. She wore a draped evening gown, with a cape over the shoulders, and voluminous sleeves. It was black velvet swirled with rosettes, and white petticoat style trim. She was still so old fashioned as to wear the suffocating s bend shaped corset, _at her late age_ , to project her bust forwards and hips backwards.

She had a beaky face, which took an opportunistic delight seeing as her hooked nose spent so much time preying upon other unfortunates. Speaking of such, the dead swathe of fur around her shoulders looked devoid of life, staring with glassy eyes, still wearing its paws and feet. _Lucky bastard._ Vianne praised it for being able to escape this conversation, and she not. But then again, it was doomed to spend the evening swathing that woman’s shoulders, and she couldn’t decide which was the lesser of two ultimate evils. Her mask was a venetian style, held up to her face on a pole, though Vianne couldn’t help her brain interjecting a certain pathway from doctors masks. Plague. And to  be avoided at all costs. _Something_ of which she associated with the member of the gentry currently making their way towards her.

“My dear, so _refreshing_ to see you… I didn’t think _you’d_ be among Lady Hexham’s ilk.” The woman lied through a pinched smile, and teeth that were gritted.

Vianne smiled demurely at the woman. Remarkably, every compliment the lady breathed to people, always sounded like a cloaked insult. It was _astonishing_ how she managed it. It must take _such effort_ to be so slyly cutting at every turn.

“My fiancé is more, of _that ilk_ , than myself. But I’ve known Lord and Lady Hexham as intimates for a few years. Their son, Lord Hexham, is a _colleague_ of my betrothed.” Vianne smiles. Folding her hands. “They work together at St. Thomas’s.” She adds.

“I admire your zealousness to be so, forthright in celebrating _such_ connections.” She smiled serenely. Though her words _were not_ as such.

“How _do you_ know Lord and Lady Hexham?” Vianne asked with clenched teeth. And fists. As she held them, tightly pinched together, at her front.

“We’ve enjoyed intimacy within their circle since the day _they owned_ Briarwell, and Bertie, Lord Hexham, inherited. I have known this family all the way back to the 1860’s _. I knew_ the _sixth_ Lord Hexham…” She congratulated herself, if she were an animal, right then, she’d have been _ruffling her feathers_ in pride. Showcasing herself.

“Well.” Vianne bit back. “I won’t judge you _too harshly_ on that front. After all, this lighting isn’t of the most flattering sort.” She cut quickly. Allowing herself to enjoy the small look of horror and insult on the woman’s face after she digested the remark. Vianne excused herself quickly after that to slide away and fetch a drink. Henry could batter her blue for her rudeness, _but she didn’t care._ He didn’t much bother with the rude old bat _either._

She slipped noiselessly from the room. Feeling a sharp stab to her ego as a group of young debs burst into cruel, chattering laughter after she passes them by. She heard their mocking. They delighted in letting her know of their displeasure. “ _That’s his fiancée.” “She works you know, can you imagine? An heiress who works? Who does she think she is?” “She’s brave to wear such a dress_ … _I’d be worried wearing a dress that looked like it came off the ark, too.”_  They drawled. Cackling.

So she wasn’t dripping diamonds, and her dress wasn’t the most _up-to-date_ model of fashion, it was barely a month old, but _clearly_ , that was still enough to be _scrutinised_. She snatched a glass of champagne from one of the stiff footman, stood invisible and quiet by the door. She tips it to her lips. And decided, expressly against Henry’s wishes that she be the conversationalist belle of the ball, that she wanted to explore Briarwell.

It was such a handsome house, it seemed a mighty shame to waste an opportunity. As they were such a large party, all the rooms were opened up for them to wander in and out of. Silent staff glided about tending to needs. Vianne faded from the room full of snobs and nasty women to be on her own. She didn’t wish to be among them, and their cruelty. Everyone had obviously read somewhere that the very rich could afford to give offense wherever they go. That it was somehow amusing for them to be so.

She wandered alone, sipping her champagne, happy to be so, and then she found herself longing to be somewhere. For the place that oft provided her the most succour when she needed it. She came across the _library_.

It was a wonderful size, lined with verbose novels, and titles. A thousands worlds, and thousands of words, all housed in one room. She realised then, that the music she heard coming from this part of the candle lit room, was not to be confused with the gramophone in the main sitting room. But rather, here, it was a piano that called out its tune to her. She was idly admiring a thick, leather bound book of Nietzsche, when the music captivated her. She recognised the familiar fluttering tune, in a minor, of Beethoven’s Bagatelle. Always her favourite in comparison to the pomp and flare of his other symphonies. As she walked along, skimming her hand along the bookshelf, she came to the end of the shelf, at which, a secret door was ajar, through there, the music reached a crescendo, becoming louder and louder. She peeked through the door, feeling like a voyeur, glimpsing into someone else’s secrecy. She stood her now empty glass on the side table. She didn’t know what was making her head lighter, the quick consumption of champagne, or the music.

The room she was glancing into, was a grand music room, as were all the rooms in Briarwell. An extension of the library with high ceilings, and that too, lit by the sumptuous quality of candle light, gave the room a golden, ethereal air, when accompanied by the soothing lull and pattern of the jovial piano music. Vianne decided that she couldn’t afford not to compliment this person on their talent. And at playing one of her favourite songs too. She couldn’t see the figure past the open piano lid, she couldn’t even discern whether they were female or male. She didn’t mind, they played with _extraordinary feeling._

She opened the door, and stepped quietly into the room. Walking quietly, just listening to their skill in the music. She spoke to them, whomever they were, reverently, softly, so as not to disturb their playing. She timed her speech perfectly, they had just dipped into the third movement.

“You play _beautifully_. I used to have an acquaintance who could play that...” She flattered. The music came slowly, fluttering to a stop, a pause. She jumped out of her skin when they spoke. Because she _hadn’t expected_ the voice to reply. And what’s more, she hadn’t expected _to recognise_ the voice…

“Who is _this charming_ acquaintance of which you speak?” Came a smug, male, interjection, before the playing resumed in its talent. Teasing her. Making a fool of her.

She came to three instant conclusions before she rounded the piano and looked to the figure playing. The _first,_ was that she knew them _very well._ The _second,_ that they definitely were a member of the male gender. And the third, was that she was never far from the _reaches_ of _Thomas Sharpe._

Under the brim of a dark crimson mask pressed to his face, his eyes flicker up to look teasingly at her, raking over the sumptuous figure her dress offered to him, and he smiles, before his attention reverts to the piano keys below his adroit fingers. She watched their nimble dexterity dance across the keys. Drawing the music out of the instrument so skilfully. Vianne didn’t want to find herself thinking it, but he looked, _sinfully good,_  bedecked in crisp white tie, and tails. She had a feeling he knew of this information, judging by the arrogance in his smile when he detected the flush of her cheeks, brightening her pale skin under the golden hem of her face mask.

She looked _so tempting_ to him, he had to peel his eyes away and focus on the music. That dress showcasing the gorgeous shape of her figure. Confidently projecting her bust, placing her hips to urge them backwards. The thin fabric drifting lazily about her shoulders, baring her neck and her décolletage, made him skip over a key or two, he was sure of it. He felt his heart beat faster when she spoke. He had taken himself away from the preening eyes of the society debs that did naught but flirt and flutter their lashes at him. He was seen a veritable rascal, yet _so very_ wealthy. No woman would encourage their daughters toward him. The men viewed him equally as distastefully. New money was as insulting and as vulgar to their kind as _no money_ _at all._ Fed up of adoration or loathing from either quarter, he had taken himself off to explore Briarwell. Clearly, she was in the same boat as he, so to speak. Both outcasts, on the fringes of a social gathering. As they had been, as a matter of fact, when they met.

“Where did you learn to play like _that?”_ She spoke up when he’d finished the song. Retreating his limbs from the instrument, turning to look more fully at her, releasing himself so he swivelled to face her.

“We’ve been apart for _two_ years, my love. A man must _have his secrets_ after all…” He smiles.

“What are you _doing here?_ How _on earth_ are you acquainted with the Hexham’s?” She asks. He chuckles, shifting around, replacing the lid down over the keys. Running his hands along the black, polished, smooth wood lid. He was enjoying her curious confusion.

“Lady Hexham _jumped_ at the opportunity to invite me here, She explained that Briarwell was _the_ event of the season. And when I enquired as to the guest list, and wouldn’t you know, my ears _leapt_ at the sound of a Mr. St. Clair and one Miss Earnest-James accompanying him. I _couldn’t resist..”_ He teases with a carefree shrug. Vianne sighed in irritability.

He came to his full height, stood a _little too close_ for her liking. His hands folded behind his back as he stood and assessed her with sharp blue eyes. Somehow they were made brighter with the mask he wore. His inky hair was brushed, swept back off his forehead, the usual defiant strands swung deviously down by his brows. His smile was infuriating and his eyes burned brighter than ever because they were _alone. Together_. _Once again._

“Try to _resist more_ , in the future… _Good evening_ , Mr Sharpe” She warns him with annoyance in her eyes and in her tone. Wishing those to be her final words to him. But she _would not_ be so lucky… His suited body crosses her path, blocking her way.

“Now I have _the pleasure_ of having you alone…” He speaks, purring at her. Having darted in front of her. She stumbles back. Not wishing to fall under his spell once more. She was _unwillingly susceptible_ to it. The last time he came near her, leaving evidence of his proximity, Henry nearly _broke her ribs._

“Don’t make _this difficult_ , Thomas.” She snaps. Hoping he’d understand, because he would get out of this unscathed, if he so chose. It was _different_  for her. Henry had a temper that he liked to take out on her. He had no dangers from being near her. But she had _a lot_  more to be scared of…

“Don’t make _what_ difficult?” He asks playfully. One dark brow crooking up on his forehead. As if thrilled him that her parting from him, she admitted to be hard.

“Don’t be _coy_. Trust me when I say it _doesn’t become you.”_  She barks out lowly. Intending to sidestep him and return to Henry. Before he got her in trouble which would lead to more suffering and pain.

Again, he blocks her way. She glowers up at him. Started to sense her breath become ragged in annoyance. He looks down at her, with more playfulness than sincerity on his face. That made her clench her teeth. Clearly, tonight, she wasn’t able to escape all the people who _irritated_ her.

“ _Trust?”_ He asks. Mocking for. The last time he had _trusted_ in her, she had broken their marriage and left him aching for her, broken hearted and _wretched_.

“I’m not going to be talked down to about _my sins_ , by a man who has _a list_ of sins as long as _my arm._ ” She insists firmly, voice rising. Her flaring anger bubbled up and out of her, and she shoved him aside.

He moved to counteract her, his fingers stole around her wrist, wrapping only gently, to keep her here to argue some more. But unbeknownst to him, even the gentle grip was enough to make her hiss out in pain. Her face contorting into a painful grimace. She winces, and tears her arm from him, not meeting her eyes. She regrets flickering her gaze up to meet his. A look of utter shock, and disbelief crossed his face.

His stance turns aggressive and he slams her into the nearest bookshelf, his body bracketing hers, _keeping_ her there. She tried wriggling, she tried pleading. But it’s no use. He had her arm. And he was busying himself now, by peeling off her glove. And when he does, he stares, inelegantly at her arm. The glove in his grip slithers to the floor as a whisper of silk, forgotten, as he takes in the sight that awaited him on her pale arm.

Her wrist was ringed with almost black _bruises_ , that were just shifting into a dark purple. Sprouting from her hand, up to her _forearm_ almost. Marks put there by someone’s rough, violent hands. He could _see_ where fingertips had a vice grip burned deep into her skin. Anger flared in his lungs, storming through his heart, making his blood heat up. She jerked her arm away, and refused to meet his livid gaze. She shrunk back in on herself.

“He _did that_ to you?” He asked tersely.

“That and _plenty more_ besides…” She explains, lowering her mask. Her lovely face looking up at him. _His heart felt like it had been run through with a stake,_ when he saw she had a fading yellow-purple eye too. The bruises concealed by her mask.

She placed it back on, and he gave her, her glove back. Having bent to retrieve it. She felt ashamed, embarrassed, and suddenly, inexplicably angry with him. _Furious._

“Vianne…” He sighs in pain.

“ _Don’t_ pity me.” She flinches. “Anything. _Just don’t_ pity me…” She remarks coldly. Brusquely wiping away a tear from her aching cheek.

As she slid the glove back up her arm, securing it back in its place. He watched her lower lip wobble. He felt deflated, here he was flirting like a randy schoolboy with her, and she was _black and blue_ all over from another mans violence. A man who claimed to love, and cherish her. _He had a hell of a way of showing his possession of her, he thought._

“The man’s a _damn_ , _rotten, animal_ , for leaving marks such as those on you.” He growled, quite rightly incensed. He recoiled slightly, when Vianne stopped dead, and glared _hell fury_ at him.

“Just because Henry’s abuse is the kind that leaves marks on my skin, doesn’t mean your abuse was any the  _less valid_.  _Thomas_. _”_  She cuts. His mouth fell open. She heads for the door, pausing when he speaks again

 _“Don’t_ you dare compare me to him…” He snaps. “I would never deign to..” He began. And when he does. She whips back, and her voice exits her in a burst, a shout. A rasping cry.  

“ _You… BROKE MY HEART_.” She fairly yells. Her voice scraping painfully, and hoarse, through her throat. Now that her anger had come bubbling forth, she couldn’t find the energy to contain it any longer.

These are the words that had whirled around, _unsaid_ , in her head and heart for two, _long_ , years, and letting them loose was a tirade she was _unable_ to stop.

“You treated me _so coldly._ You kept me an arm’s length away, and somehow made me feel like it was _my fault_. _My misunderstanding._ I was _too in love_ with you to ever be _mad at you_ for it. So I just _punished myself. For MONTHS. I kept away and stayed away because I thought that’s what you wanted and expected of me as a wife... I became used to thinking myself second best. Because that’s all I was, next to **her** , wasn’t it? _Do you have _any idea,_ what our marriage _put me through?_ I _hated_ what you had made me into. This pathetic,  _lovesick woman, pining_ for you. Aching for a smidgeon of _feeble_ attention that I’d _never win._  Turning me into someone whom you ignored at your own behest. Far more interested and concerned in fixing your _infernal machine_ , and keeping Lucille from tearing open _my throat_. when in fact, _all along…_ ” She shook her head.

“ _I cannot put_ into words what finding out about what _the two of you,_ _did to me_. I was _so angry_ , I wanted to hurt you, _as deeply you had hurt me_. I wanted to scream, and kick, and claw blue murder, and scratch your _stupid eyes_ out with my _bare hands,_ for what you did. After that, I couldn’t _bear_ to let you near me, _touch_ me, or _even look_ at me. I had, _to leave you_. I couldn’t live a lie, day in, day out. Especially not pretending to uphold a one sided love from a man I _so admired_. I was exhausted. And I _couldn’t do it anymore.”_ She swallowed. But her rage was _far from_ done.

“…and then one day, who should _waltz_ into a London ball, but the very man who cheated on me, lied to me, deceived me, and used me. **You**. _You, strode in_ , and then whispered such… _insulting things._ _Teasing me. Flirting with me_. Saying you _loved me, needed me._ That you didn’t want _to lose_ me. _Couldn’t live without me._ You lost me _two years_ ago, and it’s high time you learned, that I _can never_ love you again. I can _never_ be your wife, nor can I pretend that you didn’t _shred_ me to absolute pieces for the way you hurt and betrayed me. You’ve done _your damage_ Thomas Sharpe. And _believe me_ when I say this, it is eternally _scored_ on my _heart_.” She finishes.

He sags. Her unleashing two years’ worth of pain and her heartbreak on him sapped him of all his fighting spirit. His chest rose and fell, and other than that, and the candles flickering in their stands, there is _no movement i_ n the room coming from either of them. Far off in the house, she heard the dinner gong sound. She was pleased to see her raging outburst had hit him _squarely_ in the chest. She wanted him to _feel guilt,_ and _shame_ , as she had felt it, those years ago. 

“I have to return to Henry now…” She speaks. Her voice raw. And this time, he _lets_ her go. He’d be a fool not too.

She wipes her tears, and makes her way back to her beloveds side. She comes back into the proverbial _lion’s den_ , not surprised to see Lady Shackleton _glaring mildly_ in her direction. She goes to stand silently by Henry’s side. Her back to the door. Stood trembling, and miserable from her outburst, and Thomas knowing about the _true_ nature of Henry’s foul temper and treatment of her. More people filter into the room, coming through to take their place at the dinner table.

She feels her beau _tense_ up, and she doesn’t need to turn towards the door _to know_ that Thomas Sharpe had just stepped across the threshold, accompanied by none other than a simpering, smiling, Lady Hexham herself, showing him off to all the eligible young ladies, who preened at him like fussing _hens_.

She heard Henry’s fingers rub, where he squeezed tighter against the glass in his hands, in _annoyance_. She’s not surprised to feel his lips, hot, present, and _angry_ at her ear. And his big hand painfully clutches her elbow. Tugging her to stumble closer to him. She didn’t have the energy to fight back. _Not tonight._

“Did _you_ know _that bastard_ was invited to _this gathering?”_ He growled lowly in her ear. His whisky breath stabbing down into the skin of her neck. She could feel the weight of Thomas’s stare flicker to her, prickling her skin, when Henry moved to grab her elbow.

“Why _would I?”_ She answers back blandly. Henry grit his teeth, and chucked back his dram in one swift go. Anger shuddering through his broad frame. Her hands clasped demurely in front of her, Henry slammed his glass down. She didn’t flinch.

Just as she didn’t need _to look_ to know Thomas’s gaze was secured firmly upon her. She could feel him staring at her _as plainly_ as she could feel the suns heat on her bare skin.

 

~

 


	27. Briarwell II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Don't You Know - Jaymes Young

 

 

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_~_

 

At Thomas’s sudden apparition to Briarwell, intruding on the merry party, Vianne finds herself practically frogmarched into dinner. Her fiancé was so angered, he rudely ignored the fact that etiquette demanded a man and wife _never_ led one another through to the dining room. She felt that if she piped up mentioning this, she’d pay for it _later,_ _when they were alone_. Henry was holding onto her arm so tight in his barely concealed rage. She is sure she can feel a _new_ set of his fingertip bruises forming on her forearm. They glide elegantly into the decadent atmosphere the dining room provided. He intends for them to glide through “ _genially_ ” so he could question her some more as to Sir Sharpe, but they were _interrupted_ …

 _“I say_ , St Clair..” Came a scolding, almost laughing castigation, as he and Vianne had begun to make their way to the doors leading through. That throaty laugh of disbelief had come from none other than their host. Lady Hexham. She glided into view seamlessly, as if she had _wheels_ instead of _feet_. Her dusky pink skirts trailed casually behind her, and through her white mask, trimmed with pearls.Vianne can see a mature woman trying _her best_ to look youthful, and jovial.

She was a tall, bulky woman, with a craggy face, and unattractive, crooked teeth – stained with her lip colouring - her face was layered thick lipstick and rouge even in her late age, and the effect it had, _could not_ have been what she intended. She looked like a lady, yes, but one of the _painted variety_. The tragedy was, if she didn’t try _so hard_ to smother her face in cosmetics, she could _almost_ be called attractive. She had sable colouring and olive skin, but her garish façade of cosmetics hid that natural beauty.

Vianne let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, as the human equivalent of _devastation_ strode his way to them alongside her, still hooked - _trapped_ \- on Lady Hexham’s arm.

She could feel rage rolling off her fiancé in _waves_. _He was silent but it was there_. His face was flushed, the veins in his neck were straining _so_ prominently. He was lucky the mask hid his irate, clipped expression. His eyes were two black _pits_ of vile hatred directed at Thomas. Whose piercing blue gaze behind his damask, was, in turn, _frost_ , contempt, reserved all for St Clair. Henry was almost hunched, chest puffing with his annoyance. Whereas Thomas looked imperturbably suave. His hands folded confidently behind his back, cutting a tall, yet impossibly aloof figure.

_He stood with all the surety and calm buoyancy of a man who had no cares in the world pressing down on his shoulders._

Vianne felt hot tears prick at her eyes. But she willed them away.

“ _You’re not_ being an _absolute boar,_ St Clair, you naughty creature, and taking _your soon-to-be-wife_ into dinner. I _absolutely insist_. No one accompanies their significant other into dine anymore. I simply will _not allow it!”_ She simpers to Henry in good nature, as she was currently ticking him off.

 _“Pray delight me_ with the details. When are the _delightful nuptials_ to take place?” Thomas leers. Watching Henry’s veins burst with all his tense, suffocated aggression. Vianne gulped, her mouth sticky, dry, before she found the confidence to answer him.

“The Month after _next_ , Sir.” She explains quietly. She meets Thomas’s eyes, and then rather wished _she hadn’t_. His eyes held her own and he showed _no sign_ of backing down.

“Spring wedding.” He smiles, holding her gaze all the while. “How _divine_.” He adds. His look. That _masked, interested expression,_ made her skin _needle_ with unease.

“We thank you for _your enthusiasm_.” Henry speaks. His tone is only the merest notch above a growl.

 _It was amazing how the man could speak through such gritted teeth,_ Thomas thought. Henry left of the politesse of addressing Thomas’s rank out of his comment. It was salt in the wound that though Thomas was a baronet, and though they were low on the peerage ranks, it _was more_ than Henry. Who was _just_ a doctor.

“I have settled it. St Clair, _Sir Sharpe here_ is to take Miss James through to dinner. It is all decided. I shall _not brook_ any opposition. I’m _quite deaf_ to it don’t you know…” She remarked. “I myself an escorting the _Duke of Bosworth_ into Dinner.” She puffed her chest up in pride. “St Clair, you may escort our darling mayflower, _the delightful_ Miss Evangeline Chudwell into dine. _See how she awaits you?”_ Hexham encouraged. Turning ¾’s of the way away, and gesturing regally across the room with a sweep of her arm, where a giggling young woman dressed in a frail blue gown, simpered and fluttered her eyelashes as she visually dissected Henry from across a room.

The pleasure _that flared_ in Thomas’s eyes at Lady Hexham’s order, _didn’t bare thinking about._

If Lady Hexham viewed the ever-so-charming Miss Chudwell in this social situation as a _beautiful, blossoming mayflower_ , then, she supposed with glum self-deprecation, that she must’ve been no more than a _wilted rose_. Her dissatisfaction lay in her ability to not address Vianne even when involved _in_ conversation with her. Her lips remained pursed and tight whenever Vianne opened her mouth. And in her eyes there was a vague sense of entitlement which led her to believe herself _so far above_ this upstarting woman’s uncommon situation.

Henry dropped Vianne’s hand, leaving his gripping impression _stinging_ on her skin. He may have left her side. But he _left behind_ his bruises and digging nail marks as _his brand on her_. She didn’t even hiss when his nails stung into her skin, she was used to the pain of it.

He let the blessed Lady Hexham lead him over to his dining companion, whom giggled and simpered as he drew close. Her too glad smile made Vianne feel sorrow for the poor thing. _She didn’t know his true nature_. She watched her fiancé smile at the girl. Smiling that _handsome, felling smile_ that he’d once given to her. The one that was so deceptive in comparison to the motives behind it.

_That false, spine wracking, devilish smile._

That very smile she’d been granted with by _two_ men in her life _._ In that moment, her usual genial, placid, nature was absolutely green with envy for Miss Chudwell. She despised her innocence. That sweet, kind breed that she once recognised as something she could boast of. _She had none now._ She’d sold it away when she’d taken the name of Mrs Sharpe. When she saw that festering house. When she saw how avidly Lucille kept her _watch_ on Thomas. Hers had been stripped from her _so cruelly,_ and then she had been left exposed for all the world to see. She _detested_ Miss Chudwell because of the bitterness that swelled deep from within her, summoning forth her rage, her disappointment, and her heartbreak. All those vile, detestable emotions that had been the outcome from her falling such _easy prey_ to a smile, _just like the one_ this girl was blushing at. _Speaking of which…_

She felt Thomas move close to her side. He hated to see the way she stiffened, as if expecting something monstrous from him. Keeping her distance from him as Henry had ordered so vigorously.

“It would be _remiss_ of me to dishonour our hosts wishes… _now wouldn’t it?”_ He leers. His suave eyes _couldn’t stop_ drinking her in. _He didn’t care_ if others would remark on the hungry, dishonourable way he was looking at another man’s beloved. _He couldn’t find it in himself to care._ The admired the way her hair looked in the light, the corner of her rosebud mouth, the way it pinched. Her breathing was shallow, judging by the way the pale globes of her breasts strained, and then sunk down from her neckline. _He wondered whether or not she knew she was torturing him._ It was in being so close to her, so intimately near, but _not_ _touching her, kissing her, and holding her._ It was there his pain flourished. _Being so close but apart was agony._

_His curse was in being able to remember it all._

The way she _sighed,_ slept, laughed, bathed. The way she looked in less clothing. _The way she tastes, the way she cums._ The precise colour of her lips _, and oh,_ he interjects filthily, _her nipples_. _Those soft, sweet, rosy red, upturned pebbles that were made to be in his mouth. His teeth grazing, tugging on them._ And once his mind drifts to recalling their sex life, _he finds he can remember that all too._ That sweet taste of her wet cunt dripping down her inner thighs when he found himself there, _tasting her._ He thinks of her skin. How she was softer than velvet to his touch when she was _naked_. _He misses her fragrant skin_.

In his dreams, he fantasised about once more skimming, dragging his angular cheek along the innocent softness of her cleft and inner thighs. His long fingers digging into those hips that he could grab in a handful. Or how he had once been _so obsessed_ with studying the shape of her mouth when she laughed, or smiled. He was willing to bet she hadn’t smiled _in such a long time_ with St. Clair revered as her lord and master. She turned her body closer, facing him atleast, the sight of a strand of her hair, curling over her almost bare shoulder hits him _like lightning_ striking his persons.

_He thinks of her naked once more because of that. He could see her now, as clearly in his minds eye, as she was here, now before him. Draped in his bed sheets like a Grecian goddess, as he wrapped her around him, and grazed his animalistic, hungry teeth over her neck, hearing a lovely gasp escape her lips as he crushed their bodies together and rutted into her like he was in heat. Swallowing her moans, he claims her mouth, her hands scrabble for his back, his hair. Latching onto him, as he fucked them both into ecstasy. He was such a gentleman everywhere else, in a warped way, it made sense that their love-making could be so primal. It was eclipsing his mind with the distraction of her. The sight of her, the feel, the taste. Hot skin against hot skin. A tangle of limbs, lips, hot breath, and teeth as they burned together. He loses himself in it, in her, in fucking and loving her, and gladly. She was divine and she was all, entirely, intrinsically, his._

His entire being tenses, coiled with his sexual want for her that _he had_ to contain. Here, in the Hexham’s _ruddy drawing room_ , when he wanted nothing more than to hear her whisper sordidly in his ear, her breath hot on his neck, as she exclaimed secretly that she _wanted him tonight_. _She wanted him to come to her room at midnight. She would be his mistress, and damn Henry to hell._ He wondered if she knew she could have _every damn part_ of him if she merely crooked her finger. He would be hers in a _heartbeat_. She still was too timid to meet his eyeline, he follows her gaze to Henry and the Chudwell chit.

He reads something then in her eyes, and expression. A subtle hardness, _hurt, pain_ , at seeing Henry be so affable to another woman when all she received from him was contempt and vitriol. His heart, due to that, _swelled_ , puffing up in anger once more. His eyes remained on her, obsessed, fixed, the way she moved was almost _holy_ to him. His eyes were free in their ardent worship of her. He can understand that she was reticent, and reeling from Henry’s bruises and beatings.

Thomas _knows_ in that second he cannot win her back by being suave and cruel. But he vowed he wasn’t going to make _this easy_ for her. _He would make it as hard, and as painful as was possible. Being cruel to be kind._ He would _force_ her to see he wasn’t backing down, _no matter what_ , eventually, she would see he was a very changed man. And that tonight, when he saw her there, standing with her fiancé, looking miserable and downcast. How he wanted to beg on his hands and knees for _one look. Just one kiss more._  He’d lay his life down in defence for her. Now to make her see, that his _wretched, rotting, black heart_ was _wholly hers… It had never been Lucille’s. Not at all. Not once he had first laid eyes on her. From then on, it could only yearn to be hers._

She swallows her nervousness, and watches him as he gently plucks her hand up, placing it to rest at the crook of his elbow. His thumb gently touched the back of her hand, swiping intimately over it. She tried her best not to let herself take him in. His towering height, the way the fine velvet of his suit sleeve brushed against her arm. The subtle drift of his cologne permeating the air they now shared. She tried to put aside the way it made her _stomach clench_ with familiar longing and appreciation. Gone tonight was her ex-husbands smell, that stench of peppermint, and engine oil. Tonight, his essence was of fine, clean soap and the expensive scent of his irresistible cologne.

She would also never tell him the fact that she _adored_ his hair when he wore it shorter than it had been when they were together. It was short, and straight, where it had once been curly, untamed. Only the sweep of his groomed hair sometimes defied convention, and the oil he lightly brushed it with, and wandered into his eyes in straight strands. With his mask, his scar became less obvious, but the end of it still visible, where it lightly puckered the fine pale of his cheek. She looked away, when he peered down and caught her staring. He chuckled lightly to that.

“What about me has you _so intrigued_ , Miss James?” He asked, as they made their way through the drawing room. Crossing the book lined walls, out into the hallway. She looks away for a moment, feeling his eyes on her now, instead. She turned back and let her eyes meet his. _Those eyes she only saw now in dreams._

“Your hair. It _suits you_ , _shorter…_ ” She allows herself to compliment him. Blushing furiously, she gazes away from him, but not before she caught his glad smile.

“I wish I could say being engaged again _suited you.”_ He leers, leaning close to part speak, part whisper it. His words made her heart harden.

“Let’s not.” She begins. “I made _a vow_ to him. _I love him._ I will stay true to my devotion and my declaration of engagement _will not_ be broken, _for you_.” She quickly intercepts back at him. They came into the dining room now, and he doesn’t try to hide his smile.

“Why ever  _not?”_  He shrugs far too casually. His eyes fixed on the room before them as he spoke. “You _broke ours_. And _that wasn’t_ even a _piffling engagement_. That, was a _marriage.”_  He speaks, almost light-hearted, yet still there was a bite of bitterness to his words that let her know it still pained him. There was still anger there intended for her on his part, for ruining them, she realised.

“ _That wasn’t a_ marriage.” She spit _firmly. Insistent_. Almost scoffing. “It was _an arrangement_ for you to get your hands on my money, with occasional affection _and sex_ thrown in.” She told him bluntly. Whispering so as not to raise her voice for others to hear. She didn’t need to _further provide the fuel_ for the wildfire of their vicious gossip. She flushed when his eyes flared, glaring down at her when she mentioned the word, sex. Her words were so blunt, he was taken aback.

“You _really regret_ your attachment to me, _so much?”_  He asks. She bit her lip, feeling her chest raggedly pound in her anger. The man was good at getting under her skin, working her _last_ nerve, until it frayed, and made her _snap. On the other hand..._

_God, no, she thinks. Hating herself for it._

Of course, she couldn’t look back on their past with complete apathy and loathing. She had loved him at one time, deeply. _So deeply that it felt like madness_. Which made his betrayal to her all the more potent. She didn’t know it were possible for a man to wound her, and anger her so much all in one fell swoop.

“I regret that I loved you _too openly_. I regret letting your sister scare me. And I _loath_ the fact that I poured out my heart and soul to you, and you _locked_ yours so _thoroughly_ away from me. _We didn’t_ have a marriage, Thomas. _At best_ , we had a relationship. But _none_ of that matters now. I’ve moved on. I suggest you do the same. I will marry Henry St. Clair, and despite what you _growled_ at me so savagely at the ball, my connection to him is based on more than _lust, and Stubbornness_. I suggest you too, _move on…”_ She speaks firmly. Almost in a scathing tone. She had meant her words to be hateful and to pack a punch. But he wouldn’t retreat, no matter her anger.

“Did it _ever occur_ to you, _that I love you_ as deeply, as you loved me?” He asks her softly, gripping her arm a tad tighter.

“You had a _hell of a way_ of showing it.” She snarls. _His way of showing it was, apparently, not at all, she thinks._

“Leave me be.” She asks of him. “I’m _Henry’s. You’ve lost,_ Sir Sharpe. _That’s final.”_ She seethes.

“ _We’ll see_ about that…” Thomas speaks confidently, He turns his head to watch over his shoulder, his eyes landing on Henry and the Chudwell girl as they looked, very cosy, in one another’s company. His jaw set. _His mind_ was made up… Vianne sighed in a mixture of irritation and frustration. They resumed the silence, and admired the dining room.

A huge, long, oval table is packed to burst with towering _French conceit_ arrangements, and crystal glasses and silverware that gleams in the low candle and lamp light like glittering treasures from distant lands. Nestled amongst these are towers of freshly stacked juicy, exotic, ripe, fruit that Vianne knew no one would touch when the last course came. Plums, grapes, figs, dates, strawberries and rich colours sprang out amongst the white table, and silver accents. Every detail to this party had been planned meticulously. From the invites, to the number of ladies and gentlemen, to every course, down to its precise time, and the measured placement of  each chair, glass, right down to _each fork_ on the linen table cloth surrounding each place setting. She admires the beauty and opulent splendour of this showcase of grandeur. Looking to the side, near the end table, she can see footman stood there, stiffly flanking the walls, eerily in the same the way that the curtains hung straight from the windows. Like they weren’t human beings, but rather silent ornaments, or mere pieces of furniture. She finds herself then thinking how times were changing for them all. Working class, and upper class, alike.

It was almost _1910._ Hardly anyone could be sure of titles and inheritance of grand estates anymore. There would come a time, she was certain, when there would be no one left in service. When households managed themselves as seamlessly as they did when fleets of staff ran them. The aristocracy with all its care for social mores and safety of rank and class was coming to an end. She wondered how that would affect many of the people she saw crowded into this room here tonight, Lords, Lady’s and every rank imaginable in between. How many of them would suffer or thrive without an army of staff to rely on? It was melancholy of her to think so, but she believed that it wouldn’t be too long before everyone saw a very different way of life.

The upper echelons would be like creatures whose natural habitats were slowly being destroyed, stripped away, around them. She wondered how their frail, nasty tempers would hold when they had to make do without the luxuries they so clung too for generations back. The working class could only go on for so long being oppressed into the choices of donkeywork, be it in factories or grand homes. Of course, she couldn’t crow too loud, when she who had a meagre household of three - that would be a laughable fact if she brought that up here tonight – but she could atleast _do things for herself_. She could cook, clean, scour and scrub, wash clothes, change beds. She wasn’t afraid of getting her hands, _or_ knees, _dirty_. She had known the trials of tiredness after having had a full day. She would be very much surprised if anyone sat around the table here tonight, would have ever sullied their lily white hands with hard labours. _Well. All save for one person she knew had worked tirelessly for the riches they now amassed._

 _That man_ was currently behind her, out of sight, as he pulled out her chair for her to ease into. She sat down as he pushed it in, tucking her tight to the table. They had found their place cards – next to one another for dinner too, it seems. _This really will make Henry’s head burst.,_ she regrets to herself. Nervously she drapes her napkin over her lap, Watching her fiancé across the opposite side of the table, almost adjacent to her. It was _fashionable_ for husbands and wives to sit apart. _And the Hexham’s_ _were as fashionable as they came_.

Thomas seated himself next to her, confidently posing his body in his seat, opening his napkin to lay it across his seat with a flourish. He and Vianne were sat next to one another, he to her right, and the pompous Lord Eversleigh to her left. His eyes found St Clair’s, who was sat, tall, broad and angry opposite them. The Chudwell girl yacking away at him with a silly smile on her vain lips. Her hand flirtily skirting up St Clair’s neck, fiddling idly with his dickie bow. She was clearly a brazen young girl. To do so with the man’s fiancé _sat opposite_ her.  

He distracts himself lest he grows angrier. Thomas had heard tale of the man to Vianne’s side. He had a _vastly unhappy_ marriage to an _absolute crow_ of a woman. Lady Petunia Eversleigh. They weren’t remarked upon for their _marital harmony_. If they sniped and snapped at each other across the dinner table, they were _lucky_. They’d famously rowed openly to one another at dinner parties before now. They were united still, only by their upper class stubbornness _to avoid_ the ruination a divorce would cause.

Thomas watched out of the corner of his eyes as Eversleigh, a middle aged boar, with stubby, ruddy features, a broad nose and strong lip, and deep sunken green eyes, let his rubbery smile crook into a _filthy leer_ as he saw his conversing partner was his alluring Vianne sat between them. He sipped on his drink, letting his brows shoot up his head as he slobbered over her. He wore a gaudy gold sovereign ring on several of his fingers, and a blue mask hid his thoroughly set eyes. The vile old wretch dropped his eyes to admire her figure as she sat there. Slipping down her back, lingering on her waist, thighs and bottom. _Thomas glared_. The sweet soul she was, _thankfully, didn’t notice,_ she was too busy sipping her wine.

“ _I say_ , Lord Eversleigh. How does your, _wife,_ fare?” Thomas barked to the man, leaning round Vianne. He seemed to go quite stupid at that. He stammered out a flustered response as his flabby cheeks rumble as he spoke. “ _Q-q-q-_ quite well. Sir. I thank you.” He stuttered, taking his eyes from _his Vianne._ Sheepishly returning to his seat, looking away.

He relaxed back into his seat. Putting his inner panther back inside its cage. Though it paced and circled even thinking about Henry laying his hands on his charming ex, once more. In violence, or even worse, _in love._ When he thought about what he _would do_ to Vianne given half the chance. _Kiss her, love her, taste her, hold her. Have her naked, coming undone from his touch again,_ his skin _crawled_ with rage when he imagined the brute frame of St Clair making love to his delicate, pale, utterly _ravishing wife the way he once had._ He retracted himself from his angry reverie and focused on the room around him.

Sat directly to his right, was their very grand and great host himself, Lord Hexham, whom was just lowering himself into his seat, as his wife did down the other end of the table. Hexham was a  bald, tall, skinny man, with a deep monotone roar of a formative voice, that gave away his career as a high government official. The man looked dignified, aswell as his authoritative voice, his eyes were sharp, defined blue eyes. His nose was thin, like the blade of a blunt knife. And his lips liked best twisting into a thin sneer. His eyes looked lurid under the shade of his baroque silver damask mask. Thomas could see he was a man who took great care with his appearance, even in _meticulous_ details, his watch chain and cufflinks, and rings, _all matched_ the shining silver of his mask. He was one of those men who led by example. And his example was to be a polished peacock _at all times_ , to display his wealth and station above others. The Lord folded his napkin across his thighs, seeing whom was sat next to him. His smile twitched into a thin, wide, leer seeing he was seated near the both of them.

“Miss Earnest-James, you are new to Briarwell, are you not?” Hexham asked. This caused Lady Hexham down the other end of the table to sneer. Conversation was bubbling about the room from and between many couples, she watched, seeing Henry was engaged with Evangeline and other companions to whom he was familiar. She had no one, apart from Thomas, and the lukewarm acquaintance of both her hosts.

“I am. Your Lordship.” Vianne smiles falsely. Her heart sinking low in her chest, like a boat without its anchor, as she thought they wanted to make a humiliating example of her before they’d even started the _first course. Didn’t these cruel people have any mercy?_ “The house is most handsome. I’m liking _it immensely_.” She adds demurely, with her small polite smile.

“Mmmn,” Lord Hexham growled stiffly. Taking in her compliment with an uninterested blink. His sneer, however, still remained. “Do I take it you are also new to _our social circles_ aswell?” He asks, reaching for his wine glass, swirling It as he spoke, in preparation to take a sip. “Now, how can that be? A delightful creature like you, tucked away in London for all these years…” He asks her. His compliment was kind, but his curiosity _wasn’t._

“It is true. I _haven’t_ been in London for very long, just for these past _two years_ …” She told him. Keeping her composure. She wouldn’t let _them_ see her _crack_ under pressure. She met his eyes head on, with a demure tilt of her head. She found Henry’s eyes across the table, and his look is livid, but calm.

“I work at the Royal London, Lord Hexham, I’m an assistant to Dr Erik Harriden, and I often work as a probationer on the wards when they are exceptionally busy. Before these past two years I was… “ She began. Henry cut her off.

“She was _otherwise indisposed_ … Weren’t _you dear?”_  He interjects flatly. His tone was _cruel_.

Her panicked eyes darted to meet his, her mouth parted, and went dry, her chest heaves and her heat pounds. _Would he really be so cruel as to give her past away in front of all these people?_  Thomas felt his chest grow tight. He had underestimated just how vicious this bastard was. His vitriol speared St Clair right in the chest with the burning fury in his icy eyes. _Warning him._ Henry screwed his jaw tight together, facing Lord Hexham.

“She was busy getting her titles in the Boer War. RRC, DCM. A decorated little nurse is _Vianne._ She was indisposed, stationed at some hellish outpost abroad acting splendidly as the next Florence Nightingale.” Thomas adds with an easy smile. Smiling along with Hexham as he nodded in understanding. “ _Forgive_ my butting in, but we were just discussing this very thing before we came through to dinner, _were we not,_ Miss James?” Thomas asks her.

She visibly relaxes. Swallowing. Smiling nervously. “Yes. _Yes, indeed_ we were.” She sighs thankful to him, despite the fact she was currently set against thinking he was _any sort_ of decent man. Let alone one who rescues cornered young ladies at dinner.

“Such _distinction_ , Miss James. One finds oneself in _awe.”_  Hexham drawls, seemingly impressed. One pale brow rising up. She inclines her head in a nod of thanks. Relieved that Thomas had leapt into the fray to fence off her attackers.

She caught his eyes and a soft expression warmed his eyes, and touched her very heart. She daggered a gaze across to Henry who looked displeased that his cruelty had gone awry. She certainly didn’t think such _scathing retorts_ would originate from _him, tonight_. His jaw looked grit, and the affianced couple glared mildly at one another as the first course was served. _Thomas was glad to see it._

A fine, velvety white soup was the first course. Lady Hexham was influenced, no doubt, by Escoffier’s puree de pommes parmentier, a simple enough leek and potato soup, dotted throughout with fluffy white croutons and oysters. Rich, creamy notes of chervil delicately balanced with white wine, and cream, and the scent of the oysters makes Vianne mouth water as it is ladled out before her. She is supping it down in no time at all, spooning the soup away from her, as she’d been taught, listening to the conversation erupt on the table around her. She ceases to pay attention.

Thomas turned and caught her smile once more. She allowed herself a meagre smile back. As the conversing and the evening wore on. When she idly looked up, admiring the centrepiece, she caught her fiancés gaze as he helped himself to his second glass of wine. He made sure she watches as he smiled, and flirted with Miss Chudwell, making her blush, and giggle. He was sure to smile wider to _twist the knife_. Meeting her eyes once more, she once again sees his cruelty. She retreated her listening and kept to herself as she ate the excellent soup, Henry’s glaring however, took a _little longer_ to cease.  

 

~

 


	28. Briarwell III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Bloodstream - Ed Sheeran

 

 

~

 

The night that had fallen was an impossibly still one. Vianne was _more_ than glad to escape the torment of her captors in the stifling dining room and reel silently in her solitude, in the lavish comfort of her bedchamber. The fire was lit, casting a low amber glow across the room. She’d snuffed out a few candles, and only a couple remained, flanking her bedside.

She undresses quickly, folding her body into her flimsy, cobalt, silken bath robe. She takes out her earrings, unlatches her jewels and finery. Her dress she places back in her luggage trunk. And after she splashes water across her face and takes down the pins in her hair, she _finally_ begins to feel like _herself_ again.

After drying her face on the fluffy, scented towel provided in her cosy little en-suite, she pads silently on the thick carpets through to the bedroom. The bed was huge, and cast a brilliant white shade in the severity of the moonlight. The canopy at the headboard was fringed, dripping elegance onto the plump, downy soft pillows that she _can’t wait_ to sink into, and forget this horrid day.

She peels back the heavy curtains and lets a bit of the watery moonlight flood, spilling into the room. She looks down over the splendour of Briarwell’s gardens, she’d _adore_ to take a turn in them tomorrow. She can see a small white bench merrily situated under cover of an alcove in the rose arch. _She wants to retreat there, weather permitting, and escape in the familiar friendly company of a good book._ _Anything_ to slip away from the toxicity of the young debs who’d been invited. They descended on her like a pack of harpies from Greek mythology. With pompous smiles, and derision in their eyes. They looked down their lashes at her, with sneers, as if they were diamonds of the first water, and she was dirt on the soles of their _oh-so-fine_ shoes.

She contemplates a hot bath to relax herself, and then she wants to sleep this day away. Drop into the blackness of dreams and go somewhere that was entirely her own. A place where she didn’t have to rise to meet other people’s expectations of her. She didn’t have to bow and scrape to please Henry. _Nor_ did she have to cower and measure her words, for fear of _his temper_.

Now, more than ever before, thoughts of Thomas became _deafening_ in her mind. She found it mad to think he was downstairs _, him_ , the man who’d _always_ been apart from her. He’d been absent for two years, alive only in her mind and her memory, but now, he was _here_. _She would never let out how it made her heart burst with joy to think he was here for her again._ But however that small, sunny part of her cheered in rapture with his nearness, her rationality wept, howled and sobbed it’s very pathetic heart out, _in knowing_ she _couldn’t_ be his again. Because however badly she had been treated by Thomas Sharpe, she couldn’t stop her silly self from being _so infatuated_ with him again now he was near.

Sat next to him at dinner tonight, _stirred_ something in her she thought was lost. Watching him smile, hearing him speak, hearing him defend her from Henry’s acerbic tongue, it made her _ache._ She doesn’t know how much longer she can put up her ‘brave façade,’ and pretend that Henry was her soulmate. _Her one true, beloved, intended, and husband-to-be._ Because, deep in her heart, she knew he was _none_ of those things. He was a cruel man, who enjoyed playing his cruel games with her. He wanted her under his thumb as his doting, agreeable _little wife_.

_But, trouble was, she wasn’t a little person._

She had a voice, and stern opinions, aswell as a fortitude so immovable, she could be likened to a force of nature, in her own, genial way. She couldn’t forgive his aggression toward her tonight, forbidding her to so much as _look_ at another man, when he was free to seduce young women _so openly_ at the dinner table. She should have been more surprised, but as it was, it was the _behaviour of her set_. Married people, in this day and age, took mistresses or sought affairs, left, right, and centre. What _was uncommon_ nowadays, she hates to say, was a _truly happy_ marriage.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the windowpane. The bruise by her eye was fading more and more with each passing day. It had once been dark black and blue, and now it was a sallow yellow tinged with violet purple. It hadn’t hurt, _really_. When Henry had backhanded her across the face for something trivial, it _stung certainly_ , though now it looked _far worse_ than the pain of it. It had brought her _so low_ that Thomas had seen it tonight. Aswell as the marks on her arm. She looked down at said limb in question, turning it toward the moonlight, she watched the icy white light cover her arm in the half darkness, turning her bruise into no more than a dark blue shadow on her arm. Almost as if the shadows swallowed it, turned it _invisible_. She would like to see a day when _she wasn’t_ black and blue all over from a mans love, and better still, _without a black and blue, splintered_ , _heart._ She chides herself that she was being a silly romantic, and seriously considers instead the relaxing sting of a piping hot bath to take her mind off of every thought that swilled and sloshed around in her head.

She jumps out of her skin when the door abruptly opens across the room, behind her. The stillness of her calm, quiet night, _interrupted_.

She whips around, her hand dropping the heavy curtain, to see her bedroom door being _rudely barged_ inwards. The figure beyond, undoubtedly a man, filling the frame of his with his bulky shoulders, and strapping height. He stumbled a little sloppily in his gait, and Vianne saw that there was half a tumbler full of strong drink in his hand. _Henry_. And what was _worse, he was drunk_.

_Oh god, she thinks. Anything but Henry when he was under the stupor of drink._

She doesn’t move to go to him. Because she realises that she doesn’t want too. A bitter, hurt emotion gripped her with all the subtle tact and grace of a grand piano falling on her head. _His clothes were mussed._ His dickie bow was not quite undone. His stiff Eton collar too, loose, his shirt and waistcoat rumpled, untucked. His mask was lopsided, and his jacket had long since been shed. He stood now, only in his waistcoat, shirt, trousers and shoes, necking back the drink as his drunken legs struggled to keep his torso upright. He casually slammed the glass down on her bedside table with a sturdy thud, wiping his sleeve across the back of his mouth afterward. He panted a feral smile at her. Chuckling gently under his breath.

“Don’t you look as _lovely as ever.._.” Henry drawls towards her, moving his body closer. “I think Sharpe’s missing _you darling_. I’m surprised you haven’t _slipped off_ to his room to give the bastard that _shag_ he’s _so gagging for_.” He teases cruelly.

“I take it that Miss Chudwell is _too green_ to know how to untie _a bow tie_.” She bites back. Crossing her arms stiffly across herself. Eyeing him up and down derisively, with ice in her eyes, and judgement and accusation in her tone. He laughs heartily at that, a handsome grin splitting his lips, but his mirth was _unpleasant_.

“ _Maybe_. But not enough to stop her showing a man _a damn good time.”_  He flirts, tilting his head to inspect her, his eyes lingering on her lower half, namely, her backside and her legs _. She did have gorgeously rounded, meaty thighs, did his fiancé, he thinks. And an ass that seemed to beckon him into appreciating it, no matter what she wore._ She hates the _hunger_ and _desire_ she can detect in his eyes in that second.

“Why are _you here_ , Henry?” She asks. Turning to give him a tired, annoyed, and flatly unbothered look. One that asked him _just why_ he was bothering her. He had only come to boast _so maliciously_ that he didn’t _need her_ to sate his desires.

“Can’t a man come and _admire_ his fiancé?” He asks her dangerously, though his sick smile still remained on his face.

“I _know you_ better than that. You’re not a man _so inclined_ towards idle intimacies. I can only presume you’ve _barged_ into my room to _spitefully_ declare that you’re bedding another woman. One far kinder, and prettier and _far more_ seductive than _I am_.” She tells him with s clipped tone  

“ _Oh,_ you’re seductive…” He purrs at her. “You get off on being a _prick tease_. Vianne. You _did_ tonight in that green number. Or was that tight, cleavage showing dress, all for, _his, benefit?_ Are you showing _him_ what he’s missing? _What he can’t have?_ What he _did have_ , but _cast aside_ like a piece of _debris.”_  He mocks. His words feel like knives that land with each blow of his tongue. But she _won’t_ let him know he was hurting her.

“I _didn’t know_ he was to be in attendance. _Now did I?_ We _were both there_ when he waltzed in Henry.” _She lies_. She sticks up for herself.

His accusation making her feel _dirty._ Wrapping her arms around herself tighter at his untrue accusation that she derived pleasure from taunting men with her looks. She’d never be so brazen as that. She had some self-respect, still. _Don’t ask how, she thinks, she is amazed she has a shred left at all._

“The man is _following you_ , like some lovesick _stalker.”_ He growls. Thinking of Thomas riles his anger. “I’m _sick of the sight_ of him. Drooling in your ear all night. Simpering his pathetic smile at you all through dinner. His insolence makes my _teeth clench._ ” He snarls

“I’m amazed you could notice _anyone_ beyond your _flirting_ with simpering debutantes who are more than _half your age_.” She spits coldly.

He was close to her now, towering over her in the way he _so often did_. She was looking out of the window, away from him. She felt his thick fingers brush from under her chin, up to her jaw. A _sickeningly gentle_ touch coming from a man who’d scarred and bruised her before now. His large hand brushing her skin made shivers run the length of her spine. _And not the pleasant kind._ She was proven right when he grasped her chin with his thumb and forefinger and hooked her head to turn toward him. _She knows_. She knows she’ll pay _sorely_ for that _little dig._

He studies her for a long moment. His eyes sweeping up her face. Taking her in.  Her cheeks, _his bruise,_ examining her long lashes, her full lower lip. The upturn of her nose. She wants to recoil at the fumes of drink ripe on his breath. Her eyes avoided him.

“Are you _jealous?_ ” He murmurs in a smile, asking her calmly after a long second of silence. Retracting their gaze from the floor, she looks up and meets his hickory coloured eyes. She finds his sick pleasure in dominating her, _lingering there._ That spark he got from being drunk, aswell as lording his power, influence, and free reign over her when she was kept as his obedient hostage.

 _She doesn’t answer because she doesn’t know how_. She wrenches her chin from his grip and takes a step away. Retracting. _She wasn’t going to play this game, his game, not tonight._

“Go to _bed, Henry_. Or better yet, go back between Miss Chudwell’s eager and yearning thighs. I _couldn’t care less.”_  She speaks casually. His eyes flickered over her face, and his gleeful smile, drops. Before she could turn away to her en-suite. His arm hooks itself around her waist, and she is drawn close to him, pressing the length of her body into his.

“I think you _are jealous_ … _My love.”_ He snarls, kissing a trail down the plane of her jaw. She stills. _Stiffening_ , knowing better than to fight back. She shuts her eyes and tries to blot out his horrible words. _Only he could endear her, and repulse her at the same time_.

“I think the thought of me, and Evangeline, half clothed, _rutting_ like wild animals in her bed, would be a more than ample enough visual to _rouse your jealousy_. She’s certainly young, ripe for the plucking, of course, certainly knows her way around a _man’s cock, I’ll give her that.”_ His hand reaches for her ass, and he grabs _greedily_ at her, hurting her. His slathering kisses and dirty words made her _sick_ , rather than envious.

“ _I don’t deny_ , she is young, and has the stamina again if I wanted _another fuck_ , should I need, _but_ , I thought I’d better come and see that my affianced bride wasn’t busy being _taken_ by her ex-husband. _Plus_ , I missed this…” He pauses, and reaches up to weight each of her heavy breasts in his hands. Groping her, his hips pressing deeply into her lower body as he grew more aroused.

“ _Gorgeous… figure_.” He moans. “ _But_ you see. That’s exactly the thing _about you, Vianne_. Evangeline, so sure of her beauty, _follows through_ on her flirting. She dropped her thighs and _I gladly obliged_ her. But _you_ , _you are so untouchable.”_  He mocks, cupping her neck in his hands, squeezing slightly, feeling her swallow in panic.

“You remind me of those beautiful, taciturn, marble statues of Grecian or roman goddesses at the V&A. A thing of _pure, utter_ beauty. But they have arms missing, or gouges in their faces and pieces ripped out of them. _Just like you._ I wasn’t the least bit surprised that you were another man’s cast offs. It _explains so much_. _Sharpes damaged goods_. He _ravaged your body_ , took your heart, and got what _he needed_. I can almost _respect him_ for such callousness. He saw a business opportunity in marrying you and seized it. He truly _ruined_ you, did _he not?_ For you to be _this cold to me?_  My beautiful woman with the _stone cold heart.”_  He snaps lowly, ripping his hands off her, looking at her with a touch of anger replacing the desire in his eyes.

She steels her jaw, trying her best not to let his truths sink in. Because if they did, she’s sure they’d _capsize_ her sinking, dull heart. Her fists clench at her sides, and right then, she doesn’t care that he’d kill her for it. _She wanted to swing for him_.

“So because I don’t _drop_ my skirts for you, the minute you click your fingers, you deduce I have a cold, _dead, heart?”_  She asks nastily. “ _Aren’t you just_ a honey tongued flatterer. I wonder how I’ve _resisted such charms_ , _oh yes, no wait, I remember now…”_  She adds. “ _A beating_ now and then _usually does_ the trick.” She braves. Her eyes were growing wild, bright with anger and tears. She smiles sarccily. Mildly glaring her hatred at him. He didn’t look impressed.

“I watched you and Sharpe, tonight. He seems to be _unbothered_ by your attentions. Hope that won’t cause you _pain?_ I heard that Mary Lyndon has set her cap for him. Matter of fact I heard her tonight exclaim that they were _soon to be_ courting. Such _a shame for you_ …” He mocks, stroking her cheek lovingly, though in his eyes was hatred. “Must _sting a little_ in knowing that even your ex can so easily _resist_ you. _He’s glad to escape being near you,_ I should imagine…” He spits callously.

She knew it was untrue, and it was just him being heartless. But the fear of the truth of it made her stomach coil and her throat close up. “Don’t be _such a child.”_ She snaps, her voice – _and spirit_ \- breaking, as he carried on.

“ _Think about it,_ Vianne. If he _really did_ want to resume his intimacies with you, get you under him, in his bed, dinner was over hours ago, why isn’t he _here?”_  He asks, tilting his head, proud of causing her pain. She shook her head. _Refusing to believe_.

“He would _never be_ courting Mary Lyndon. She hates the nouveau riche. She _is ridiculo-_ ” She sniffs. Trying to retain her secrecy of her affection for Thomas. She cuts herself off. Realising the _implications_ of what she had just said. She swallows, and slowly shuts her eyes, and Henry grins. He tilts his head condescendingly at her. _Aw. There was her sore weakness._

“So that’s where your _cold heart truly lies then? Hmm?”_  He asks her insensitively. Raising a brow, making fun of her. Laughing at her. He sneers as a sad tear swipes down her cheek.

“You’re _being absurd_.” She lies. Trying her utmost best to look brave. She couldn’t look at him. 

“He _doesn’t love you_ , Vianne. Right now he’s probably in the arms of some _easy tart_ , indulging in something _you’d never_ give to him.” Henry tells her. “A good house party is assurance for wedded couples to seek some, _easy, lays_. He’s most likely _face down_ in that insufferable Harper chit as we speak. Her figures decent I suppose, _no tits_ to speak of, but I’ve heard _she’s very easily_ manipulated.” He smirks.

He would never know the potency of the thoughts in her head right then. She can’t believe how _readily_ he manipulated her. _He’d exposed a nerve, and was taking great fun in jabbing at it_. It was raw and open, and he was playing with it, the way a predator toys with their prey.

“Don’t mistake me, I don’t think he cares for you. But if _you pursue_ him Vianne. I will make you pay _very dearly_ for it, hear this. _Sweetheart_. You go after him, and I will make you regret it for the rest of your _miserable life.”_  He threatens.

“Please, just, _go_.” She speaks lowly, she didn’t have the energy to hear anymore. She knew he was probably riling her up. But the thought that he may have been telling the truth, caused a bigger pain in her chest than she thought _possible_.

“You’ll chum me on the shooting drive tomorrow. 10am, _don’t_ _be late_. Wear something _decent_ this time.” He tells her. Back to ordering her about. Her tear filled eyes meet his. She wants to say no. But she _really_ wants him to leave. He turns his back and heads for the door. She sincerely hopes Evangeline Chudwell enjoyed him. She had _never been more glad_ to see the back of him.

She lets her tears truly come after she hears the door latch click shut. A loud sob echoes off the silent walls of her room. Her gasping breath and tears come quick, and she tries her best to stifle them, muffling her mouth with her hand. Feeling her tears burn her skin as they dribble over her fingers. She knew she had a partiality to him, but she never thought she’d so plainly let it loose. _And what’s worse_ , was that Henry _mocked her viciously_ for it.

She hated him in that moment. Because he had made her see how her pathetic feelings were still _so devoted, tied,_ to a man she would _never have._

 

 

~

 

 

He watched St Clair leave her room. Shutting it behind him. He turned and gazed down the hallway, right past him. He was suddenly glad for the shadows and dark of this house that Midnight brought out, concealed his hiding place so easily. Satisfied no one had seen him, he turned his cowardly back and retreated, he could see the man didn’t leave the women’s quarters, but matter of fact, he went three doors down, and knocked. From the room he just departed, Came the gasps and shaky breath. _It was sobbing he could hear._  

Thomas felt such rage swell in his chest he hardly _knew how_ he remained silent.

A girl answered the door. The brunette he had been so avidly _flirting_ with all through dinner. The Chudwell girl. Henry hooked her in for a kiss, and walked her backwards into her room. She hitched up her skirts as they went and his hands sought under them too. Thankfully, they disappeared out of sight before he could see more. _He wanted to tear that bastards spine out._ He was a bloody fool seeking after a girl like _that_ , when a _woman_ like his fiancé was whom he was cuckolding her for.

Bright blue eyes burned down the corridor, however, as another dark shape moved to her door. The shadows striped over the figure, moonlight streaking across their face.

 _Eversleigh_.

 _That foul old wretch was sneaking into her room_. He jiggled the doorknob, before quickly letting himself in. His heart was in his mouth. But now, _Oh now_ , Eversleigh had chosen his moment _well._ In seeing Henry betray her, Thomas needed something _to mutilate_ to take out his anger. _His inner panther rattled at the bars of its cage_ , for it _so wanted_ to be let out. He snarled. Anger filtered hot, volcanic into his blood. It was unleashed from its cage now, hunting with tooth and claw, hungry, it was out for _blood._

_And_ w _hat Everlseigh had just done had given it a perfect excuse to be set running free..._

_~_

 

 


	29. Briarwell IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Here we Are - The Fray

 

 

 

~

 

At first, she didn’t hear the door’s soft whine as it was opened, and gently shut back almost silently. Another time, she would’ve heard the bottom of it sweep against the thick carpets. And the latch being gently let back into the frame with a sliding click. Any other time, when not eclipsed in anger and hurt, she would’ve heard it.

As it was, she was in her en suite, furiously drying her eyes with the back of her hand. Angrily scrubbing away the painful tears that carved down her cheeks with all the burning intensity of acid on her skin. Her body swelled with rage and disgust at Henry’s sharp jabs at her sorest point. Yet, she also felt the utterly debilitating weight of sadness fight to mangle her too. Those two emotions were currently battling it out, inside her, seeing which one would crush her first.

She fought not to look in her troubled reflection in the oval looking glass. Because if she does, she fear that would make more tears come. Seeing her weary face, tired raw, red eyes, bruises and pitiful expression of despondency. Her stubborn pride would balk and shout at _how pathetic_ she was being, to let her emotions be exposed and manipulated in such a way by the man she was supposed to love. Yet, she could only loathe him more and more with each passing day. When she ruminated over the possibility of spending an eternity with him, being married to him, a spear of pain stakes through her heart. For she knew already, that she wouldn’t be able to bare it. She is unsure her wounded heart could survive it for very long. Knowing she was to be a cuckolded wife before she’d even made her trek up the aisle, was a bitter pill she’d never swallow.

 _It was clearly her lot in life to always be ranked second best,_ she muses. _Atleast this time, I don’t love him._ She thinks. _That small, saving grace will make being Mrs St. Clair slightly easier._

With that wretched thought in her mind, she dries her burning eyes, and with a dejected sniffle, hangs up her robe on the peg provided by the sink, and trudges to her bed to try and fitfully fall  into sleep. She stepped across the threshold, into her dark bedchamber, her eyes gaze over her room, and it is then her heart leaps out of her chest in fright when she saw she _wasn’t alone_.

She stumbles back, almost into the wall by her bedside cabinet, her hand reaching for the solid expanse of it, in her fright, to keep her upright. Her blood heated with the brief, sharp prickle of a nasty surprise flushing through her. Then came that lump of fear sat cold, cloying, bile rising, in her throat. _His purpose of sneaking in her room was apparent…_ her eyes flicker across to the door. And he sees this.

“I _wouldn’t bother_. I took the liberty of locking the door. And _I have_ the key.” He smiles, patting his pocket.

“Lord Eversleigh..” She gasps, trying to regain herself. The stout, middle aged man, was sat, perfectly nonchalant, his eyes, reflecting the amber flames in the hearth, sparkled darkly back at her. He cut a relaxed posture sat in the wingback chair by the fire. A grin snakes its way across his rubbery lips _. If he thought she looked divine in that man snaring gown, she looked virtually edible in a flimsy, almost sheer, nightgown. She was comparable, rival, to the goddess Calypso in her seductive allure._

“Why, are you _here?_ Your lordship?” She shakily asks. The man was atleast 30 years her senior. He had greying hair and wrinkles were apparent on his face, _for heavens sake._ His gaudy sovereign rings caught the fires light, glinting gold, like the scales of darting fish in inky dark depths. One of his legs crossed the other, and he seemed to be assessing her with a flare in his eyes that she didn’t much like the look of.

“ _How civil_ , addressing my title, Miss James. You really are a _sweet little_ morsel…” He rumbled, his tone was _anything_ but delicate. Making it utterly clear what he wanted from her. Her jaw steeled. Abuse from Henry she’d tolerate. But not from a lecherous stranger.

“Thankyou for the compliment.” She states drily. “But I may assure you now, sneaking into my room uninvited to pay it, will _not sweeten_ my disposition. If you think wheedling me with idle flattery will get you anywhere, you are _sorely mistaken_. _Please leave_.” She demands.

 _He chuckled_. Her heart sank. _He was laughing at her._

“I am here, because I very much _ached_ after your company since dinner. Sharpe rather rudely _stole you_ from my attentions. I didn’t get a chance to properly address my interest in you.” _She must remember to thank Thomas for that rescue, she remarks to herself._

“Your interest in me _should cease_. _You’re_ a married man, and _I am_ an affianced woman.” She ground out with as much anger as she could summon.

“A marriage, and an engagement for that matter, shouldn’t stand in the way of one having _ones fun_ …” He declared, rising to a stand. He was a head taller than her, and she doubted if she could fight him. Though he was middle aged, he was bound to be stronger than she. She gulped, and the sound of it thudded down her throat, punctuating the silence that surrounded them. He was advancing to her now. _If she screams,_ she thinks, _would anyone even come to her aid? Or would that expose her to more cruel gossip and the - quite sickening - insinuation that she’d taken Eversleigh as a lover?_

She saw her words, her truths, her interjections, didn’t deter him. Didn’t even cause him to falter in his gait.

“I’ll tell your wife.” She spits out. Hating herself for that snarled threat, but her panicking mind was scrabbling for a foothold with which to stop him.

 _“Tell her._ She’s currently _screwing_ the Duke of Bosworth. I _doubt_ she’ll care.” He leers. He passed by the window now. Moonlight striped over his face, over his hungry eyes and foul smile.

“ _I’ll scream_.” She promises. She could smell his cologne. Feel the heat of him coming nearer. Smell the cigar smoke, and brandy on him.

“They _usually_ do.” He sneers. That horrifying answer caused her eyes to screw shut, trying to distance herself from this. She hated how two hot tears swiped down her cheek. He was going to ravish her. This awful, lecherous man was going to get what he wanted from her. And she could do nothing but stay silent. In exposing them, she’d only open herself to more ridicule. Henry would see it as entirely her fault, as it was her vulgar appearance that had caught Eversleigh’s attention it would, _obviously,_ be _her fault_ for tempting him. Not his for refraining from acting on said temptation. _When Thomas hears,_ she thinks, _he’ll be hurt, confused and quite rightly bewildered that she had let this old boar into her bed._

He was so close now, he licked his horrible lips, groaning at the back of his throat as he reached forwards to pull her gown down over one shoulder. Exposing her shoulder. He fancied through the light from the window, he could see her naked form through the gown she wore. He could see the dark patches of her nipples through the gown. Aswell as the apex of her thighs, coloured dark with the shadow of her thatch of hair down there, too. He idly wonders if her intimate part bore the same dazzling copper as that of her hair. _He wanted to run his fingers through both,_ he thinks. He comes closer, so their bodies brush, his mouth lowers near her ear, and he can sense her erratic pulse, her breathing ragged, and her delightful bosoms swelled with  each pulled breath. A shudder pounds through her when his hand strikes out quickly to cup her mons in his hand, his fingers stroking her through her gown. His mouth fell open on her shoulder, _the man was almost drooling._

This was vile. She felt hot, cornered, panicked, filthy, and she didn’t know what she wanted more. To cry and sob, and beg _, or,_ to empty her stomach contents at his feet. All she could smell was the foul waft of his overpowering _, old mans_ , cologne. An awful fragrance of something like sandalwood and spearmint choking her. She could feel hot tears of panic and fear dagger her eyes.

“After all, your fiancé is off having his fun with Chudwell, isn’t he? What’s stopping you from indulging you from a bit of _, fun of your own?”_ He asks, cupping her harder. So hard, in fact, that she whines in pain. He’d leave bruises, she was sure of that. She shook her head, trying to squirm away from him, her body, relayed by panic, suddenly settles on trying to find the energy of which to escape him. “I don’t _want fun_ , I don’t _want you. Get off me!”_ She wails loudly. Again, comes that mocking laugh.

Through her beating heart, and Eversleigh’s panting over her like a dog, she doesn’t hear the small scritches and scratches that comes valiantly from the other side of the door. The sound of something scraping into the wood, the lock being tampered with. She hears none of it, she was trying to grapple with a lecherous lord who saw her as his property. She tries clawing at him, but is stopped when he snarls and tangles his hand in her hair, and wrenches, her scalp flares with searing pain and she arches into the wall, trying to throw him off. His mouth is by her ear and spittle lands on her when he growls.

“ _You can’t_ get away, the door is locked. You’ll enjoy me, I promise. No one’s coming for you. Miss James. You may as well just _submit to me_. You’re too weak to fight me. _Who’s going to save_ you now?” He asks her. Fed up of her whining, he presses his burgeoning arousal to jab into the flesh of her rounded thighs,

“I might, _Your Lordship_.” Comes a low snarl from over Eversleigh’s shoulder. That voice held such hatred, such visceral rage she almost cannot fathom it to be Thomas’s voice.

The next second everything happens so quickly, Vianne doesn’t see much, she screws her eyes shut, but opens them again the see Eversleigh torn from her, thrown from embracing her, he staggers across the room, thrown there by the man who now had his back to her. A vision in black and white, was her ex.

Dressed down in nothing but a dishevelled dress shirt, and his black dress trousers. The old man righted himself, and fumbled madly for his pocket, snarling as he pulled out a small pocket knife, clenching it in his hand, his stance aggressive, ready to fight back. The knife was small, a dagger, no longer than seven inches.  Vianne wanted to whimper, that dagger stuck into the right place, could be _fatal_. She shrinks back into the wall, focusing on her breathing, and trying not to let the tremor in her hands overtake her whole, cold, body.

It was Thomas’ turn to laugh now, which he did. A wry, amused chuckle that made the power and confidence in Eversleigh’s eyes shrink down.

“That wont save you _from me_ , Eversleigh, that won’t _stop me._ It won’t even _slow me down.”_ He threatens.

He stalks closer to the man, and as if to prove his point, quicker than she can comprehend, he knocks the knife from the mans grasp, punches him in the stomach, and then across the jaw, in three such speedy, impressive manoeuvres, it almost looked graceful. Thomas then grabs his collar, and hooks the mans collar, lifting him up, so he could see the damage. A bruised eye that would be black by the morning and a bit of blood under his nose. _Tame, compared to his inner desires to rip his head clean off his shoulders._

His hands go to the man’s waistcoat, patting him down, until he finds what he was seeking, wrenching her door key from his pocket, he throws him away. His clothes mussed under his collar where Thomas had tugged at him.

“Leave the Lady alone, _and get out_ , before I give you _far more_ to worry about _than a black eye_.” He orders. Standing between her, and her tormentor. Looking for all the world, like a rumpled, dashing, _angry god_ , to her eyes. She wanted to comprehend how on earth he got though a locked door to help her in time. His tall stance reeked of rage and power in defence of her.

“How _dare you_ interfere in mine and the _lady’s_ intimate-“ Eversleigh began, trying in vain, to take the noble high road. Thomas would have none of it.

“You foul _old letch_.” Thomas susurrates. His voice lethally quiet. The man really had so little respect for women, he was going to stand here and defend his abuse to her.

“St Clair did mention some bastard was sniffing round her like a dog… I take it _that’s you?_ Sharpe?” He mocked. “…and here, Henry told me he suspects you didn’t have the gall to _fuck her_.” He snaps.

“What I do, or do not have the gall to do, _I assure you_ , is none of your business.” Thomas growls, as he steps closer. “Before I bury your own blade in your belly. I suggest _you leave_.” He warns.

Eversleigh takes a moment, glaring at Thomas, to smooth back his flustered, tousled hair. And tug the creases out of his collar. Righting his rumpled state. “You won’t _hear the last_ of this. Sharpe. You and your little, _slut.”_

“I’m _quaking_ in my boots.” Thomas leers sarcastically. His eyes were poison as he daggered Eversleigh with a gaze that would have smart men scared. Before he left he turns and addresses Vianne.

“How would your fiancé like to know of your dalliance with _this wastrel,_ Miss James?” He taunts. Thomas steps forwards, and Eversleigh was right to flinch. Because Thomas didn’t lay a hand on the man in violence again. He merely cupped the mans neck, and wrenched his head close to whisper in his ear. She was too far away to hear, but the Lord’s face paled, and his eyes blew wide in fear – though the old fool tried to hide it. Without another word, he jerked away from Thomas and scattered from the room as quick as his stupid legs could take him.

In his wake, Thomas gently shuts the door, takes the key he snatched from Eversleigh, and locks it, he then presses his hand against it as his head hangs low. He turns around and Vianne thought she caught the gleam of tears shining silver in his eyes. She lets out a sigh of relief, but before she can get a hold of herself, a sob, somehow, bursts its way out of her and she places her hand to rub at her clammy forehead. She could feel herself shaking from her ordeals tonight. _Henry. Eversleigh. Him. It was all too much…_

At seeing her lower lip tremble before he sob came, Thomas felt his heart stutter in his chest. Her other hand was struggling to hold herself against the wall. He wants to take her in his arms, and hold her, and let her know that not every man was so wretched. He fights against that impulse briefly, but when he sees how her pale body trembles. It is a reflex, he got to her in two strides and wraps her in his arms. Holding her head, his lips nestle into her hair, and he lets her cry out her anguish.

Having her in his arms again – _though not in the intimate way he’d so often envisioned_ – was still enough to make him giddy, thinking that it was _finally her,_ _his Vianne_ , in his embrace again. No matter the circumstance. She could let him hold her, for now, that was enough. Though he felt selfish in thinking that it wouldn’t sustain him _for long_. His need for her, he’d come to realise in these two years apart, was something like a lust, a need, a hunger, it lived in his heart and it could not be quashed. It would never settle. And he was never free from it. Not night, nor day. She was always there. The few same, faded, hazy memories of her, replaying over and over in his head so he does not dare let his brain forget her face, her beauty, or her kindness.

She was thankful for his being here. Despite all her sensibilities that reminded her what he’d put her through. He was her, and that small simple regard, for now, absolved him of his past sins. He was redeemed by the warm and constancy of her kinship. She could see his penance in the small things, the way he spoke to her, smiled at her, even when he flirted with her. It was silly, but it was in the way he offered her the butter dish at dinner, passed her the salt when she asked for it. Made sure she was offered wine first. The way he patted, and held her hand when they walked together. And though she would never relay that, deep down, she was _aching_ after the way he’d kissed her that night he strode into the ballroom, and announced he’d win her back. She wanted to kiss him again, and tonight, she wanted to feel her connection with him, when Henry had decided she wasn’t worth his time, she yearned to be worth someone else’s. And she couldn’t be more glad of it _being him_.

She buries her face into his sternum, her lips almost against his skin, feeling the familiarity of his musk, and his body heat. He was usually warm as toast. She never knew how he did it, living in a place as drafty as Allerdale, yet, his hands, and his body, _always_ remained warm. That hadn’t changed. She let his warmth and his gentleness seep into her.

“You’re shaking…” He mumbles gently, one hand carting down her upper arm. He pulls back and observes her, she inelegantly wipes her nose with the back of her hand. Sniffling again, she once more dries her stinging eyes and tries to compose herself. He reaches for his pocket, and then curls a handkerchief into her hand. She pauses when she looks down at it. It was a square, white cloth, stitched with crimson thread, initials. His initials, _‘TS’_ what made her stop in her tracks, was the set of memories that came flooding back when she looked at the small, unassuming square of cloth. _She’d stitched this kerchief for them on their rainy, two week honeymoon, in Scotland._ She smiled lightly, suddenly feeling bolstered by the faint recollection that she had a connection. And if nothing else, she was assured of having that with him.

He watches her as she weighed the object in her hand, he knew then, that she’d remembered it, and how much it meant to him that he still carried it around. The reminders of her he would always carry. That in his pocket. The welt where her wedding ring used to sit on his hand. A set of cufflinks that she’d given him never left his shirt cuffs. The scar on his face he’d gained from finally telling Lucille what she’d always dreaded to hear. Every time he looked in the mirror he was reminded of her, and _all he would do_ , and all he _had done_ , for her. In the name of their love.

She dried her eyes, and handed him back the cloth. Though he would be loosing a reminder of her, he puts his hand up. Inaudibly telling her to keep it. She turned her eyes to the locked door.

“Forgive me for asking, but, _how_ did you get in?” She asks in a raspy voice. Gentle and quiet.

He reached for his back pocket, and showed her a small tool. A steel rod, and a pocket scalpel.

“ _No door_ is locked to a mechanic.” He explains. She finds herself smiling. He steps past to place his tools back in his pocket, and to go for the door.

“I _should go_ …” He says. The last thing she needed tonight, was another man in her room after the earlier altercation.

“Yes, you _should._ ” Vianne speaks, it takes all her bravery to speak her next, weak, sentence. His heart sunk. She was pushing him away, again.

“But _, please. Don’t_.” She ushers in a tiny voice. He turned back to look at her, from the other side of the bed now, moonlight making his skin an excellent pale shade. Highlighting the raw red of his scar.

“How did you know he was-“ She swallowed. She couldn’t say his name, he stepped back. For a moment, he didn’t speak. He let his actions talk, laying his hand over hers in comfort.

“I was, intending to come to your room, to tell you something I _need you_ to hear. I saw Henry leave, and Eversleigh slip in. I would have been able to save you _much more_ heartache and violence from him, had the boar _not locked_ the door in his wake. _Luckily_ , it wasn’t too complex to pick my way in.” He explains. She could only focus on the first part of his statement.

“What is _this something_ I need to hear?” She asks, _stupidly_ , she had a feeling she already knew what it was.

He swallowed, and looked her directly in the eyes. His look was an aura of ‘ _you already know, must you ask?’_  He shook his head and shrugged.

“That I’ve _never been_ more in _love_ with you.” He states simply.

Her mouth gapes, and she is certain her heart is leaping off the walls of her chest doing skilful somersaults. It certainly feels like it.

“ _That I curse_ every day _I don’t_ wake up to you in my bed, opposite me. _I detest_ how my past behaviour led you to run from me, and into the arms of a man like St. Clair, who surrounds you with _toxic, arrogant, idiots_ who think they can treat you as _a lesser person_ because of who you _are_ comfortable to be. _That_ …” he paused to scoff. “That I was _so baffled_ and _overawed_ by your love for me, I _never knew_ how to express it back. I only knew how to, _bed you_. _Only how to lust for you_. And I can see now why you were insulted. I abused and used your love for me, to _such ill effect_. But most importantly, I wanted to tell you that if I’d ‘ _scored my damage on your heart’_ as you so claimed, then, you _tore me open_. Vianne. You taught me what true love is. And I thank the stars in the heavens that I _haven’t_ been the same man since.” He speaks openly, honestly.

Two years’ worth of pent up lost affection, and love was pouring out of him, and his voice was breaking as he spoke. As cliché as it was, it was something alike _everything_ she’d needed to hear from him. She opened her mouth to speak, but he started forwards, and seized her hands, cupping them. He _wasn’t done_ yet.

“I know I’ve _no right_ _to even think_ these words, let alone say them. But I don’t know how much longer I _can stand_ seeing you with _him_. Not when he _does this_ to you…” He tells, sweeping her hair aside to better see the yellow bruise on her eyelid.

“I don’t know how I’ll _ever start_ to redeem myself to you Vianne. I’d rather face 200 years in purgatory or go through the seven circles of hell, than to see you _wed him,_ or for me to know you’ll _never kiss me again_ , or _love me again._ _He can’t love you like I do_. I’ll give you everything And I know you’d never ask that of me, _but I would_. You could click your fingers and I promise you, I’d come running. You _have all of me_. I’m entirely, wholly, completely, _yours, Vianne.”_  He rasps, cupping her neck in desperation as he spoke.

“ _Always_ have been. _Always_ intend to be.” He tells her. “If you want to reject me. _Do it now_. Do it _now_ , and move on to wed him, if he’ll make you happy, _one day_. But just know this, that I will never marry anyone else. I will never love anyone else _. I can’t_. not that this should sway your decision, but-“ She clutched his hands back.

“ _Stop._ ” She speaks. “Please, _Thomas. Stop_.” And his words halt at once.

He looks all over her face, awaiting her next sentence. Seeing whether or not it would break his heart, and spirit, in two. She had the power to do so, he had finally handed her the means with which to hurt him. It was terrifying. But it was what he had to give her the opportunity to finally do. And now, she could choose in this moment, whether or not she gave him _hope, or ruin. Love,_ or _despair._

“How can you think, _for one second_ …” She pauses. His face is on the precipice of falling into desolation.

“That I would choose _him_ , _over you?”_  She finishes.

In that moment, Thomas thought, she looked so angelically beautiful, it made his _heart hurt._ Her eyes shinning bright, blue and looking lovely in the moonlight. Her hair, that particular shade of copper that was like a naked flame cloaked in moonlight.

She looked across at him. Standing, rumpled, careworn, and having just handed her his heart and his undying love. She looked at the scar, and she just _knew_ , somehow, that his loving her was his redemption. That he hadn’t given up, and it was likely he never would.

Though she had another man’s engagement ring on her finger, and _had his bruises_ marring her perfect skin. She reached for her left hand, _and slipped off Henry’s ring._

That was all the urging the pair of them needed.

The ring clattered to the carpet, forgotten, as Thomas took her roughly into his arms. His large hand dwarfed the side of her neck. And his mouth gently slid to hers. Joining together in blissful rapture. _She’d forgotten how he could make her feel small in his arms. Small, but very loved._ Her hands floundered before they found their place, one tangled in his hair. The other, lay on his shoulder. His unoccupied hand found its way to her hip, sneaking round her back, he hooks her in close as he kisses her. Crushing their fronts together. And just alike that first night at the ball, when he came to find her again, his kiss steals everything rational from her. _Lust_ is the only thing left.

He urges her backwards, and her knees clip the edge of her bed, before she can break away to lower herself down Thomas swoops down, and grips her knees, toppling her back quickly onto the quilts, covering her body with his, doing something she remembered he always did, gripping her thigh and hooking it over his hip, pressing his hips down into the soft swell of her own. Her devious hands find his shoulders, and ruck his loose shirt up over his shoulders, bunching it. Getting her hint, Thomas reaches around and throws it off, sending it flying across the room to the floor. He growls in breaking away from her lips, and moans when he comes back to them, his hands want to wander, but he is scared of overwhelming her. When he pulls up, leaving them breathless, chest pounding, lips wet and red. Hungry for more. Her soft, wonderful body pressing into him is quickly taking away all his resolve, he wants to rut them both into ecstasy. Saw his hips mercilessly into her beautiful body over and over and give her what two years apart made _him long for_.

He wanted to graze her, mark her all over with his teeth and his mouth. Her beasts, shoulders, neck, thighs. _Anything was fair game_. Let Henry see her tomorrow at breakfast, marked with love bites from a man _who truly_ loved her. And so help him, if he tried to lay another hand on her again, he’d be there, to snap the bastards arm off. He looked down at her, his gorgeous lover, his fingers thread through the hair at the back of her neck, pulling gently out, to comb through her hair, as he watched the strands of it pass through his fingers. Admiring its simple beauty. He leant down and kissed the pale moles that littered her neck.

“I’ve missed these moles on your neck.” He smiles, smirking as he nuzzles into her warm body, feeling her breath skip and her heart race as he pressed his lips to each spot where they lay. He gently plucked at her neckline, and unbuttoned her nightgown to her stomach. She shivered at being exposed to the cooler air, and being exposed to him. His eyes were nothing but loving. And as she watched, his straight hair slunk down his forehead as he lovingly regarded her body. _That made him look like a boy._ She thinks. _But this is a very adult desire in his eyes._

His hands gently spread open her gown, peeling off one side, then, the other. And he supresses a bone deep groan of pure pleasure, shivers dance down his spine as he looks at her naked breasts once again. _Just as perfect as he remembered them._ Puckered tight. Her nipples the colour of roses. He does nothing but look at her, for a moment, her eyes slip closed, and she shakily draws a wobbling breath as his face hovers over her sternum, kissing her gently there too. She feels his eyelashes flutter, tickle, against her skin. That was how close he was, he watches himself move as he brings a hand up and caresses her left breast, feeling the heavy, soft weight of it under his hand. Her nipples tightened stiffer with the way his hot breath drifted across her. Her thighs trembled, and she pressed them together, finding a well of wetness between them. Two years without so much more as a kiss from Henry. Thomas had awoken something in her she thought lost forever. _Her lust. Her sexual desire_. He wanted to wield it to _its full effect_ , tonight.

She looks up, groaning louder than she intended when his mouth swoops up and captures that very same peak in his hot mouth. One of her hand tangles in his hair, the other grasps for the bedsheets above her head. She was sopping now, so much so, she is certain she left a mark at the apex of her gown with how aroused his suckling on her nipples had made her. He releases her breast from the ravishing censure of his mouth, heading north, to kiss her neck again. Besotted to have the taste, the heat, of her skin under his tongue once more. _He is selfish, he wants it all, he wants more._ He doesn’t want to stop until they are both exhausted, and he cant hold out for one single, thrust more.

“May I lift your skirts miss James?” He asks into her neck, punctuating each word, with a kiss that made her groan. She swallows, nodding, unable to speak she is so far lost in her euphoric rapture in just being caressed by him. She shifts her hips, and she hikes up her nightgown, until it is laying just above her beautiful mons. Baring her glorious thighs and soaked sex to his gaze. He fancies he could scent her already, that sweet, hot musk of her arousal, _her body_ , that he was yearning for, dreaming of only hours previously. Though he never imagined that tonight would be the night he’d be able to have his fill of her. _To guide his tongue across her sweet lips until she was begging him to stop. To taste her clit once more, hear her moan, watch her cum._

He kisses his way down to his intended target. Mouthing at the plump of her stomach, dragging his teeth to tease over her hipbones. Sucking dark marks where he dared. His inky hair slid over her stomach, as he bowed his head down, giving love to her body. Kissing down to her thighs, his tongue sneaking out to slither over the soft, plump flesh of her mound. To say she bucked into him was an understatement. _She almost flew off the bed into his arms._ But he kept her there, and with good reason.

“You may wish to bite your tongue darling. Unless you want Henry and that Chudwell idiot to know that we’re getting up to _no good..”_ He smirks, in between pressing kisses up and over her mons. She frowns.

“Bite _my tongue?”_ She asks bewildered.

“Allow me to demonstrate.” He explains.

And when she feels his strong tongue part her lips and dive into her, she instantly grasps his meaning. Grasping her thighs and sinking his tongue as deep as it could reach. The sheer rawness of the moan that tore from her throat was both _beautiful_ and _visceral_. _Two years. That was a sin to keep this glorious body unloved and free from such pleasure as this for two long, unloved, untouched years_ , he muses.

She can hardly keep still, and he redoubles his effort. He wanted all those lecherous idiots to hear her sweet voice sing his name in sexual bliss. Needing more access to love her better, he crawls to the floor, and hauls her body into him, quickly throwing her legs over his shoulders, he sinks his face into her sex. _Inhaling her, tasting her_. He couldn’t get enough. His fingers claw into her thighs, and she is fighting now merely to keep quiet. Though clearly, he didn’t desire that. She tugs on his hair, moaning his name louder, unable to help the shouting yelp that he encourages to ravage through her. He ran his tongue across her clit, and smirks when he see’s how she chokes on his name when he does. She felt long denied pleasure ravaging her spine, as potently as he was ravishing her body. Especially as his hands slid under her ass, and squeezed tight, testing the globe of her glorious rear in his hands as he devoured. His tongue ran sinful patterns across her sex, she felt tears drip from her eyes, and she felt so wonderfully, blissfully lightheaded.

He can see her chest heave, and he watches her flounder in the euphoria he was granting her. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the bedsheet. He ate like a starving man denied all sustenance. He realised that he was moaning too, merely watching her suffer her pleasure so beautifully. He feels her thighs squeeze tighter about his neck. But still he doesn’t relent. He wants to whisper sweet nothings to her, pour his love audibly into her ears. Yet, she is too intoxicating to watch, and pleasure, and before he knows it, she is begging him to stop, shivering, rocking her hips up into him, spent and gasping at every new brush of stimulation his mouth gives.

He wipes his mouth on his shirt sleeve, and slinks up over her like an animal to kiss her again. She startles, and he wraps himself up into her kiss. He promised her he wouldn’t stop til she was his. And her panting, moaning, screaming his name was as good as any tag of ownership to his mind. He caresses her all the more with kisses, touches, _no spot_ of her was left unloved by his mouth or his hands. She seemed surprised he wasn’t seeking after doing anything to sate his own urges. When he pulls off her neck, satisfied with the several marks of his teeth that now scatter it. She pants the first intelligible words she’s spoken since they began. And it was a soft, gentle enquiry as to his state of arousal.

“Do you-want?” She begins. Blushing furiously. Lord, she was so sweet. He thinks, leaning in to kiss her, he chuckles.

“My darling. this encounter was _in no way,_ for the benefit of _my libido_. It was for yours. _Though,_ please be aware I could happily, _live,_ between your _lovely thighs.”_  He moans as he makes her weak with his kiss again. She groans into him. More aroused and pleasured than she can ever remember being. Though the ring she’d torn off lay glinting in the moonlight, like a beacon. But she was too busy wrapping herself up in her bedsheets and her naked ex lover to give her current one, so much as an after thought. He made her, and her alone, climax four more times before the sun rose, and she had never _slept so well_.

He doesn’t wish too, but he leaves her, sated and naked. Twisted and tangled in their sex mussed sheets at dawn. Before the sun rose. She’d promised to chum him on the shooting drive after Henry had his turn. But he assured her, with a wink, that she’d be his again, eventually. The parting kiss he presses to her forehead leaves him feeling bitter that he had to leave her company. He unlocks the door, and slips out, and blending to the dark of the hallway, makes his way to his cold bed, with a heart full of joy, love and a smile on his lips at the fact he’d worn his lover out almost to the point of unconsciousness.

In his elation, he doesn’t notice a hulking elderly frame huddle back into their doorway to avoid being seen. After he passes and silently glides into his bedchamber. A hooked nose, and a aristocratic, elderly old face, peers to the door he’d exited. _Miss Earnest James’ Door_. Sly eyes rove over to his room. And his state of undress raised a brow from her. Lady Shackleton smirked to herself. She’d be sure to spread this gossip _like wildfire_ at the breakfast table…

 

~


	30. Briarwell V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; I'm a Fool to Want You - Billie Holliday

 

 

~

 

The morning air was _cruelly cold_. Where the pleasant sunshine of autumn had warmed the air the day before, today, there is no such geniality present before the sun rises; It’s golden slopes not yet present existing to thaw the chill that came with the azure night that was passing.

She awakes slowly, to see her cosy room, tainted with that _certain kind_ of blue, the kind that proceeded the daylight. There is a biting nip to the cold air, when in comparison to the heady delight, heat, and passionate embrace that her lover provided the night before. She pulls the bedclothes, clutching them at her bosom, to lean over and see the small carriage clock at her bedside. Her eyes are too sleep worn to see the time clearly, but the knowledge that it was somewhere near four has her curling back into the snug of her warm bedsheets with a contented sigh. She shrugs and clutches at the quilts to fold over her shoulders, wrapping up her chilled skin. It felt foreign to her, to wake up, naked, amongst her bedsheets. She tucked her feet back into the snug warmth of her bed. Her mood still giddy from the events of the night before.

She dozes lazily, like some sun warmed Grecian goddess, entangled naked in her luxurious toga. She rises after the sun comes up, and quickly prepares herself for the shooting drive. She bathes, with the water warm enough to bite hot at her every skin cell, she dries, and winds her hair up with numerous pins, and begins layering her underthing’s. Chemise, drawers, corset, petticoat. And then on with a heavy, thick, navy velvet hunting skirt, and her shirtwaist. She wrangles for a while with the stiff detachable collar, but it eventually acquiesces. When she buttons up her navy vest, after tying her scarlet tie in a Windsor knot, she glances in the mirror, noticing how a dark love bite peeked over the collar of her shirt. She smiles to herself, and brazenly decided to uncoil a loose wisp of hair to hang down the back of her neck, and by her ears too. She toys, following the curve of the curl with her finger, glancing idly down at her jewellery box, she pauses.

She hadn’t noticed that small oval, white box last night… she reached down and slipped off the lid. Her breath deserted her when she glimpsed it’s contents. It was a flawless pair of gold chandelier, emerald encrusted earrings. And atop them was a small folded note. Feeling very humbled, and wooed, she unfolds the little slip of paper, and reads its scrawled contents. Written in a familiar spidery, inky scrawl. Addressed _‘To my affectionate lover’_  a tug of realisation and shooting thrills rocked down her spine right then. The awakening of understanding. _She was his lover._

She carefully plucks one earring from its silken nest, and holds it up in the mirror to see how it looked. She blinks at her reflection, and _she suddenly sees_. She doesn’t see the bruises from Henry’s assault. Nor the dark bags from sleepless nights, or the flaws every woman is quick to scrutinize in the looking glass. But she sees the beauty they cause in her rarely used smile. In how they enchantingly capture the light in little glittering drops of molten green. How they gel so well with the colour of her hair. And it rocks her to her _very core._

She finds her courage. Slips the earrings in her lobes. Grabs her hat, and heads down for breakfast.

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

She headed out to Briarwell humungous, winding gravel drive after breakfast ends. The air was full of lung punching cold, and stiff with decaying frost from the nights chill. The sky is clear, but the sun struggled to chip through the horizon. She stepped out of doors, affixing her gloves, and joins the throngs of men and women awaiting todays blood sport to shoot some game, gathered on the drive with the beaters, and loaders. Happy spaniels and excited labs clung to their masters heels. They too, awaiting the very thing they’d been bred for to enjoy. Same could be said for the noble owners. She wasn’t overtly fond of shooting, but it was better than taking to side saddle to go chasing after an elusive fox. _That_ took an excruciating toll on her legs, which she was glad to go without.

She fixes her leather gloves as she scans around for Henry. Looking for him in amongst a sea of Norfolk shooting jackets, bolts of loud tweed bedecked every figure, and every head crowned with a newsboy tweed hat. Numerous knees were swathed in knickerbockers and plus fours, save for her beau. When she eventually finds him, he has his 20 bore shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm. A domed hat covers his rusty hair, and he was mayhap the only man to not favour plus fours. He wore a tweed trouser suit, with leather boots, and a large, matching, olive hued frockcoat. He also eschewed the fashion for a newsboy hat, opting instead for his donkey brown homburg.

She smooths out a wrinkle in her skirts, as she crunches across the noisy, grating gravel to come to him. She sees his mood is as dour and as stony as usual. He doesn’t enquire as to her well-being. He doesn’t even wish her a good morning.

“You’re late.” He grumps. Slotting the last cartridge in his gun, and cocking it, the snapping sound would’ve made her flinch. But she was in too good of a mood to let it. She smiles, wryly, meeting his eyes. Thankful that the brim of her large, flat Vanderbilt hat’s shade, would cover the fading bruise should anyone look directly at her, but, it occurs to her, her collar _only just_ concealed the bruises Thomas left on her neck.

“I was partaking in breakfast.” She offers. Making no apology. He lifts his eyes to meet hers, she meets his gaze with the most carefree smile. Wondering where her jovial bravery was stemming from.

“Since when did _you_ take breakfast?” He scoffs in disbelief. Focusing more on the gun, than her.

“Since I woke up this morning famished.” She answers, trying not to let her cheeks go pink as to the reason why. “ _I wasn’t aware_ that my taking such a meal is seen as _an infraction.”_   She quips. He merely ignores that comment as he fiddled with his gun. Until he looked up, taking her in properly. He did a double take. When he looked at her again. He slung his rifle off to one side and scooped a hand around her, to the back of her waist, slinging her forwards, angling her to tilt her head up to meet his look.

“And pray tell me, why your hair is loose?” He asks quietly but dangerously. Eyeing up the stray wisps of her hair as if they were the biggest threat of the 20th century. The way he was saying it so furiously, but their pose had suggested to others that he wanted to kiss her cheek, or embrace her in some way. _But, sadly_ , he was being his usual abhorrent self.

“I wanted to wear it differently this morning.” She defended.

“Differently as _in vulgar?”_ He asks. His eyes flitted all over her face. Searching. There was something different about her today. _She was uplifted. Confident. And something else he couldn’t quite place his finger on._

“It’s a loose coil of hair. Henry. It’s hardly going to _doom me_ to ill repute. My mere character seems to have done _that already_.” She answers stiffly. Angrily.

He unhands her. His touch, however left wrinkles on her clothes, and the impression of his grip, lingered, on her hip.

Henry brusquely handed some shells to his loader without saying a word. Shoving the rest deep down in his pocket.

“Walk with me.” He orders stiffly, she looks about to see the dogs were barking and baying, straining their leads. Their noses filled with the scent of game, and appetites stoked for blood. A wagonette was going to take the less able ladies, or the youngest debs who didn’t wish to muddy their pretty boots, up to the copse in the nearby woods where the drive started. There they would split and chum their respective partners. The young chits who were prone to swoon at the noise and violence of the sport were confined to the gardens to sketch today. Vianne so wishes she could be one of them. Alas…

“Am I not going in the trap with the other ladies?” she asks. He turns on his heel, expecting her to follow, like a little lapdog.

“ _No._ You’re _not._ ” He tells her. He seemed to want to get away very quickly. From whom, she could only guess… her heart trips wildly, slamming into the walls of her chest in giddiness _. Could it be?_

She turns over her shoulder, expectantly, but caught sight of Miss Chudwell, eagerly trying to catch Henry’s eyeline. He looked her right in the face, and _dismissed_ her. Acting as if she were no more to him than a beggar on the street. Turning his back. Beginning to walk away, up to the shoot.

Vianne looked from her fiancé, back to the crestfallen woman, who was baying for attention as if she were a clamouring pet. Henry could be like that with his moods. The most attentive man in the world when he wanted something, and once he got it, he could be so _very cold. As cold as a halibut on ice_. She had a feeling she should’ve warned Miss Chudwell his affections were never forthcoming for long. She could personally attest to that. She almost felt a spike of pain for the poor dear, for not knowing any better. _For not knowing men better_. Yet, she’d thrown her virtue and repute at the feet of a man who’d trample all over her and her delicate feelings with no whiff of remorse _. That was Henry all over._ No wonder he made such a successful surgeon. Vianne wondered sometimes if the man wasn’t sociopathic.

She watched Miss Chudwell’s innocent face fall. And a saddened expression overcame her. Vianne met her eyes under the brim of her hat, and dropped her head. She turned to follow her fiancé, having an uncanny, awful feeling that Miss Chudwell had just sold away her innocence to an uncaring man who only wanted an easy lay for the night. She knew intimately the pain of such a horror. _Yet another girl you’ve ruined, Henry_. She thinks.

She turns to join Henry in his intended direction, and when she did, the crowds around her shifted, as people shuffled about to converse. She catches sight of a familiar face through the crowds. She stiffens, cool sickly panic slithering along her spine, her stomach prickling, spiking in hatred as she saw the bruised expression of Lord Eversleigh glaring daggers at her. His wrinkled eye, saggy, was marred with a blossoming bruise, and his rubbery lower lip jutted out, swollen, cut by the brute force of Thomas’s hands in his rage to defend her. He ground his teeth together, and looked purposefully in her direction, steeling his old self up to come and give her a piece of his mind. His gnarled hands tightened on his gun, and he moved closer, Vianne was willing him not too, with all her might. He’d doubtless give away how his face had become so mangled to Henry, _and then_ she would be _in for it._ She inhaled a nervous breath, trying not to let her expression show her tumult.

However, events took a pleasurable turn as he halted halfway in his advance. His eyes blew wider, and his jaw tightened, before he stepped to the side. Looking away sharply, engaging more men in conversation, loosing interest in coming over to make her miserable, it seems. She frowns, _wondering why,_ when she feels a cool shadow brush across the back of her neck. _She need wonder no longer._ Her spine weakens. Her knees buckle. She shuts her eyes, wets her lips, and her stomach goes giddy like an enthralled silly schoolgirl. Her face _cannot but_ help stretching into a glad smile.

She twisted around to see whom was lurking behind her, managing so brilliantly to scare off lecherous old lords. A tall, dashing, scarred, _panther_ of a man. Swathed in his usual dark garb. Today, it was a graphite hued tweed that cloaked his body. A long overcoat lapped at his knees, and his white shirt and vermillion tie stood out like a beacon amongst the darkness of his suit. He too, hadn’t fully embraced the sporting country dress, opting for a trilby hat.

 _“Morning_. Miss James.” He flirts. His wicked smile makes her body do something _completely idiotic_ , and she hates to think how hot and red her blushing cheeks must look to him. _As obvious as a lighthouse beacon on a foggy night._ Those Sharpe eyes would doubtless pick up on such. She averts her eyes, looking down she nods her head to him, unable to stop smiling.

“Good morning, to you. Sir Sharpe.” She smiles back. Her stands confidently with his hands folded behind his back, and she, kept hers folded demurely at her front. This makes him smile wider. _After last night, she was anything but a demure, shy, wallflower. Not when she could moan his name as loudly as she had done in her throes of passion._

Henry, not being far off, asserts his bulking presence at Vianne’s side. His booted feet shifted and scratched on the drive. And the gun slung in his arm, and his glare, would’ve had any puppyish boy fleeing for the hills if they were trying to flirt with another mans intended. Thomas _merely smiled_ at the man.

“I can’t leave you unattended for _two seconds_ , now can I?” Henry asks lowly. Pointedly glaring at the loitering Baronet.

“I _wouldn’t_ recommend it.” Thomas leers to Henry. Whose fists tighten, making his leather gloves squeak as he does. Vianne fights a laughing smile as she peers at her feet. Her face was _so red_ now, she was sure she was as red as a beetroot.

“Henry, Sir Sharpe was _merely wishing_ me a good morning. There’s no need to be so _curt._ ” Vianne turns to him, chiding him. Henry grumbled in response.

“Pray tell me, did you hear this mornings keenest gossip?” Thomas asked her.

“Indeed, I have not.” Vianne smiles. Her cheeks were cooling now.

“It’s in regards to Lord Eversleigh.” Thomas smirks. “Apparently, last night, he had one too many brandy’s and fell face first down the staircase, when he headed for bed.” He awarded. Vianne had to remember to keep her composure. _One_ , she wanted to kiss him _so ardently_ for covering up the lords attempted assault of her. Two, she has to pretend that this was the first she heard of the so called ‘scandal.’

“Clumsy _old oaf_.” Henry rumbled beside her.

“I imagine he’ll have a _very sore head_ , and ego this morning.” Vianne speaks up. When she meets Thomas’s eyes, it’s _very damn inconvenient_ that she looses all her breath so quickly. Her heart was slamming up against the walls of her chest like a mad thing.

“One may _only hope_.” Thomas smiles. His eyes not having left hers. And when the wind picks up, her loose wisps of hair wind about the side of her face, softly thrashing into her earrings. Which, he noticed, looked far nicer on her, than they did sat lifelessly in their box. They caught the sparse sunlight and twinkled, sparkling at him. It thrilled him to know she was wearing a secret token of their joining, their passion, the night before. Right in front of her beloved. He had to hold back from taking her in his arms and kissing her once more.

“Do you shoot, Sharpe?” Henry asks gruffly.

 _“Rarely_. I’m afraid.” Thomas offers.

“I _do hope_ you can keep up with the sport. Hexham isn’t forgiving of men who _slow him_ down on his drive.” He warned. At last the  man showed some emotion. And it was in his amused, cruel smile, as he made fun of Thomas. Poking at him, ribbing him for his inexperience.

“I’m a decent enough shot. I’m sure I’ll _keep stride_ with the rest.” Thomas assures him. Clenching his hands together behind his back. Trying to forget the urge to punch him square in the jaw.

Normally, Thomas would’ve returned the man’s scathing acerbity. But he had _every reason_ to smile back like he hadn’t a care in the world. Those reasons all involved him orally pleasuring the revolting man’s fiancé _all night_. The woman stood now two feet from him whom he’d spent the night with, naked, writhing, twisting in her bedsheets, whilst the man himself _was none the wiser_. He hadn’t even seen Vianne naked. _But, oh_ , Thomas thinks. _The stupid man didn’t know what he was missing_.

“If I might I take the liberty, Miss James. Would you avail me of _your_ company on the second drive?” He turns and asks. His eyes scorching her.

“It’d be my pleasure.” Vianne smiles. Quickly accepting.

“ _Perfect_.” Thomas grins. And his smile is white, sharp, and _predatory._

Her stomach coils in excitement and anticipation of his smile and the filthy intent that was possibly behind it. They are all interrupted as a hunting horn blares across the drive, signalling the start of the shoot. The beaters and loaders would ride on ahead ready to drive the game into the waiting crossfire of the guns.

Before they have to take to the drives, Henry turns away to speak to his loader. And Thomas seizes his moment. He plucks Vianne’s hand up to his lips, and kisses it. Even though she wore gloves, she could still _feel_ his lips on her. His hand then reached up and cupped the side of her neck, caressing her. And it is enough to make her flush with heat once again, such a gentle, barely there, touch from him. He murmurs gentle words to her before her fiancé turns back around to take her arm and lead her off. Henry twists back around, only just catching him in the act before he slips away, off into the crowds.

“I _can’t wait_.” He smiles, with a wink. Then he straightens up, and he is gone. And she is left tingling. Shamefully, _wanting more._ Her breath is short and shallow. And she knows she _couldn’t wait_ either.

 

~

 

Her and Henry set off on their path, in silence. Following the path uphill into the silent woods. The mist of the morning lapped at their ankles, and the air is crisp, scented of woody earth, and wet moss. The grass crunches under the soles of their boots, and the trees tower tall, imposing and dark above them. In the far off distance, they can hear beaters making noise to flush out the elusive game birds. Be it partridge, pheasant, or grouse.

They trod on in silence. Though she could feel Henry _itching_ to say something about Thomas. At last, after several terse minutes he speaks.

“You seem to have a renewed interest in _him_ this morning.” He speaks lowly.

“Is that _a_ crime?” She asks, fed up of his jealousy.

“You’re to be, _my_ , wife.” He states again.

“As if I could _ever, forget_ that _.”_ She snipes back _._ “You’re getting yourself worked up over, _nothing. Henry_.” She fights back.

He stops them both short and grips her wrist.

“The way I see him _looking_ at you, _isn’t nothing_. The way he kisses your hand _isn’t nothing_. _He_ makes a beeline for you in every room you’re in. _He’s_ sat next to you at dinner. _He’s_ the one you converse with in the drawing room afterwards. And you expect me to believe this attraction is all _one sided?”_ He asks. “How _stupid_ do you think _I am?”_ He grinds out through gritted teeth.

“And do you think I _didn’t notice_ how your eyes land on _every_ other woman, _but me?”_ She rasps back. Her voice rising to almost a shout.

“How many stage girls, actresses, songstresses, heiresses and debutantes _do you_ have in tow, Henry? Answer me that if you can _struggle_ to think of a number. _But no_. you’re right. Me flirting a little with the _one man_ I used to love really is the straw that broke the camel’s _back_.” She spits. Quipping sarcastically. Walking off.

He followed.

“ _Don’t you dare_ walk away from me Vianne.” He seethes.

“ _Why not?_ What more could you _possibly do_ to me? You’ve bruised me. Insulted me. Hurt me. What else is left?” She asks. Tired. Fed up. Absolutely done with constantly being on a knifes edge with him. He walks after her, and stops where she’d halted to meet him.

“Do you even still want to _marry me, Henry?_ All we appear to do is make each other miserable. And though I know we may have loved each other at one point. Do we still. _Now?”_   She asks in a quiet tone. Her voice even. That seems to stump him. His face goes still and tense. “Because I’ve been _wracking my brains_ for a reason. And I’m _struggling.._.” She tells him.

“I’m not dignifying that with _an answer_. We’re _engaged_. _We will_ be married. That is _final._ ” He relents.

“Then atleast _tell me this_ , do you think we will ever make one another _happy?”_ She asks him sincerely. She stormed closer to him to force his attention on her. His face turns cruel. He walks past her. Ignoring her, as usual. But then he stops in his tracks.

“Where is this all doubt stemming from might _I ask?”_ He begins.

“From me _finally waking up_ to the realisation that I don’t deserve to be bound in holy _misery_ to you. _No_ matter my past. _No_ matter all that has gone before. Should I really just settle, lose my voice, and my confidence, and expect to be bypassed for all the women who you hold greater affection for?” She asks genially. Her words biting in anger where she dared.

“The long and short of it is, that I don’t make _you happy. Henry_. It seems to be my universal fault. Failing to please you at _every turn_.” She awards. Again, he is silent.

“Who would make _you happy_ , Vianne?” He asks. Snarking at her.

“I’d be happy to be alone again. But being stuck in another loveless marriage with a man who _makes me feel alone_ is a horror I’m eager to _avoid_.” She tells him honestly. For the first time. She was telling him the truth. And she wasn’t afraid.

“We’ll speak no more of this folly now.” He relents. Turning to look at her. He meets her gaze for a second before he walks off. She follows, with a sigh. For just a second a glimmer of his softer side had shown. But now it had _sealed back up_ to be its usual indomitable self.

He strode ahead, and she followed, and the eventually came to the clearing where the rest of the party were. A row of tweed suited men walked steadily with beaters, flushing out the birds. Henry took his position behind the standing gun, a good few metres away from the other gentleman. A shiver of familiarity ran through her spine when she saw her ex stood not three positions away. Inspecting the 20 bore in his hands before he cocked it and surveyed the woods before them. He was smiling genially at the young girl stood beside him. Miss Eva Lampshire. If Vianne said so herself, the girl was one of the _most tolerable_ debs invited to this gathering. She had an uncertain posture, a small nose, blue eyes, thick bark coloured hair, and poky wide, shoulders. She stood off to Thomas’s side, idly chatting and nodding, every now and then engaging in idle conversation. Vianne watched her exes profile for a second. His straight hair fell over his forehead as he loaded another shell, and checked the sight once more.

Luckily, she snapped back into reality long enough to place her hands over her ears as she shots began. Great, booming, sharp claps that echoed off every close tree, and bounced back twice as loudly. Though the sound was muffled, she still heard the sharp slap of birds wings beating in the air. Dogs clamoured and growled to be let loose to fetch the fallen game. And every man gave it their best to hit the target.

The smoke from the hot barrel drifted back over her after Henry’s rapid shots. She saw he managed to hit two birds. A pheasant, and a grouse unless she was mistaken. Henrys loader had a springy little spaniel that bounded through the undergrowth as soon as its lead was freed. It came back with the two birds stuffed in its mouth. Bounding back over spitting them at Henry’s feet, it sniffed affectionately, tail wagging, at her boots.

She smiled and fed it the small piece of dried liver that the loader handed to her. She fussed the salt and pepper speckled spaniel, rubbing his ears and cooing inane love that one could get away with cooing to a happy dog. A sleek lumbering shape caught her eye, and she saw Thomas bent down to welcome a lolloping Labrador to spit no less than three birds at his feet, then bound back out for more. She let herself smile lightly, biting her lip. Henry had miffed and teased him about being a poor shot, out of practice, and not able to keep up and now the man had _double_ his game.

Henry shoved the gun back to his shooter, grumbling about how he should be quicker on the next drive. He then stalked off, after shooting a sharp look her way, to go and find his next chumming partner. She could imagine Miss Chudwell would be eager to step in and seek as to why she’d been so rudely snubbed when she’d had nothing but passion from him the night before. She stepped down from behind the standing wall, and moved across the clipped undergrowth, her skirts tangling in the foliage on the forest floor. Strewn with golden leaves, her shoes make a delightful crush on the leaves underfoot. Gentleman and ladies follow the path that cut through the woods. Arm in arm, they chatter and wheedle each other, or discuss the weather, and the sport this season.

She idles along, her head shooting upwards when a sudden flapping squawking scatters overhead. It makes her heart pound when she sees a frightened mallard make a quick getaway, high above, in the colossal reach of the treetops. Her lips part as she looks up, and when she looks down again, to eye level, she sees that her second shooting partner is awaiting on her. He steps closer to her, and she has to fight off her giddiness at his proximity once again. His essence slides across to her. His soap from his shave, a little spice and something else musky from his cologne, and just a twist of peppermint. It lingered on his breath, and in his hair. It was _intoxicating_.  As was the heat of him. When he crooked her arm to rest in his. She delighted in moving closer.

“You’re doing _remarkably_. Considering you only said you’re a ‘ _decent shot.’_ I’d rather wager four birds, means you could be deemed as rather an ‘ _excellent shot’”_ She smiles to him. He chuckles at her flattery.

“I had my fingers crossed.” He leers, smiling that handsome grin at her. “And after the way your charming fiancé seemed to want me to fail hopelessly and show myself up. I thought I’d better step up to the occasion.”

“Your courage always rises with every attempt made to intimidate you?” She asks. Echoing a somewhat famous authoresses words. He turned, amused at her words.

“I’m _no, Mr. Darcy_. Vianne.” He smiles. And the way he purrs those words near her ear make her shudder and weaken all at once. His hot breath slid along her neck like a caress. Goosebumps rose up in its wake.

“But I can safely promise you, I’m ten times his equal in bed.” He whispers.

She nearly fell over her legs were buckling so much.

“Mr. Darcy wouldn’t have dreamt _of doing half the things I did to you_ last night _, out of wedlock.”_ He flirts. She blushes _._

“Indeed not.” She meets his eyes, gazing from under her eyelashes. _She looked so seductive doing that_ , he thinks.

“No.” She finalises. Before she smiles wickedly. “I think if any literary hero is for comparison in regards to you. Heathcliff is more similar. Something to do with the _hair_ , I believe.” She japes.

He doesn’t fight back a chuckle that rumbles out of his throat. “If you say so, my sweet.” He reaches up to hold her hands, and as they walk together over rough terrain, he watches her earrings jangle and catch the sparse light there was to be had.

“The earrings suit you, So I see. _I knew_ they would.” He smirks, congratulating himself. Watching them as they hung by her neck. That pale, long, supple neck that he really needed to press his lips too, sometime soon. Be rewarded with one of her gasping moans that set his blood, and lust, aflame.

She smiles, and her hand goes up to touch them.

“I adore them. But you _shouldn’t have_ …” She resists humbly.

“I _really should_.” He presses. Watching her face as she turned to the side to see who else was about. He was gazing at her so lovingly, she could feel the heat of her cheeks against the frosty, cold air. He scans around too, and when he notices that they have fallen far behind the rest of the party. He brings them to a stop, she turns her body into his, and his hands go to the back of her hips, reeling her in, to stand close, tucked into him.

“However did I survive those two, long years, without kissing you?” He asks quietly. Examining her as reverently as if she were an object of holy worship.

So close she can see every movement from those eyes as he _drinks her in_. Stood as if they would embrace, but he doesn’t lean to kiss her, instead, he _studies her_. He brings his hand up, to catch the stray hair that buffeted on the slight breeze. Waving out by her ear, he feels its shape. Its softness. Drinks in with his eyes what the colour of that strand of hair looks like against his skin. Slowly, he touches to the side of her neck, near the earrings, stroking down the side of her face so softly, as if to memorise every soft contour, every line of her. The negative spaces and hollows that surrounded her body. He wants to relearn every one, and last night got him off to a _flying start,_ but he _needed more. He’ll always need more of her._

Voices rumble in the distance, men’s shouts, and she goes startled, like a shy deer, and turns away to see who it was. But he can’t let her. He takes her hand and pulls her along with him, she follows, uncertain, but then she see’s he is leading her into the forest, where the trees were denser, and there was no path to be found.

“Thomas, what about the _other people?_ They may have sent someone back _for us, or..-“_

He brings them to a stop, and wastes no more time in keeping them apart. Before she knows it, her back hits a strong, sturdy column of a wide oak tree, and with his hands cradling her neck both sides, he kisses her. Muffling her words to die before they got past her teeth. He swallows them into his kiss, just as his body tries to envelope her. His hips against her torso, his legs tangle with hers, finding them, even through the cloth of her skirts. His hands slide from her neck when he feels her soften, and grip her hips to pull her more firmly into him. His arousal flaring, _aching, needing_ what he’d denied himself the night before. Sink into her warm wetness and become one with her again. His hands _claw_ into her and his hips press _deep_. Her lips slide off his and he can feel her sweet breath pant against his mouth.

Her hands don’t know where to go. His kiss had addled her sensibilities into uselessness. She felt about as though she were _melting_ , her body seeking to mould into his before she comprehend he was making it do so. Her brain was skipping and her heart, her heart felt _full._ One hand left her hip, and came up to the back of her neck, teasing with warm, soft fingers, along her nape, sliding into her thick red hair. Where it was pinned up, he is certain to make sure strands of it are let loose from the confine of her hairstyle. So everyone who saw her neat chignon would know it had been mussed by _someone else’s_ hands.

She managed to retrieve a lungful of air when he pulls away to yank her even closer  - if such a thing was possible what with them both being pressed nose to nose already. She gasps at the cold air that sneaks up her skirts when he hikes it slightly up, to he could wrap her thigh up about his hip. Her chest was heaving under her shirt, more so when he lowers his hot mouth to her neck, biting, nipping, teasing with tongue and teeth in equal measure. Her face is a soundless expression of ecstasy, as he plucked kisses and caresses at her _weakest_ spot. Her head tilted to the side, and she let him have all the access he wanted. Her hand now found the back of his head, gloved hand stroking through the trimmed, neat hairs at his nape. The oddity of the cold leather made his skin _tingle_ in pleasure.

He growls a moan into her shoulder, giving the lonely love bite that sat there, a companion. She bites her lip hearing him grumble. His moans always did sound so lovely to her mind.

“If there weren’t people milling around, shooting in the trees not five hundred metres from us, Vianne, I think I could _have you_ right here, against _a bloody tree_.” His body bucks into hers again, and she feels herself moan, and words that felt so right to exclaim, finally fell from her lips.

“You _can_ have me. Tonight.” She moans. He stiffens. Retreats, and looks her square in the face. Making sure he was certain he just heard the words he _never dreamed_ he would again.

“Give me the _time_ and _place..”_ He demands, holding her tighter, muffling her thoughts with another scorching kiss that made her toes curl.

“After Dinner. My room.” She pants, smiling when he attacked her neck again. She stifled her moan of pleasure, as her knees knocked together in weakness, when his teeth scraped her neck again. She speaks again, and though it is in a lust filled voice, no more than a breathy whisper, she’d never been more certain about her decision in all her life.

“ _Come to me_ Thomas. Tonight. Because I _need to be yours_ again…”

 

~

 


	31. Briarwell VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; You Are - Estelle

 

 

 

~

 

Much later that very same morning after, _very reluctantly_ , letting his Vianne slide away, fixing her hair to keep faithful on her promise to chum the Earl of Westcot, he continues on with the drive. Catching up to his loader and his next companion - a preening debutante - who’d taken it upon herself to steady her balance by gripping onto his arm and exclaiming in a giggled hush how _powerfully strong_ his bicep felt under her hands. _He fought the urge to roll his eyes and shrug her off._

Furthermore, she felt she needed to make herself alluring to him by making her voice breathy and girly, and not letting a dallying smile leave her lips. Whilst Miss Mabel Chittock _fluffed_ her skirts, and chittered on, enquiring as to whether he thought her dress pretty, and being busy winding a blonde ringlet around her finger in an attempt to flirtily capture attention, he answered with due politesse that her dress was very fine, _yet,_ his eyes strayed. Matter of fact, _they strayed_ to the titian haired beauty stood not three couples away, whom was chatting amiably with the Earl. Her hands composed demurely, clasped at her front, her smile stretched out to its sweet fullest. Thomas fancied if he looked close enough he could see _his_ love-bite peeking over her collar like a beacon.

His stomach ties itself in excited knots.

A wave of want coils deep in his gut for her. He is _an addicted man_. And all he can selfishly think, is that _he needs more. Filthy images_ invade his mind, and he cannot hold them back from taking precedence over the keen flirting’s of a vain blonde deb. When as it was, he was day dreaming about tonight, at dinner, when he’d be in full dress, and she’d be in some gorgeous gown. He wanted to usher her into a hidden alcove, pin her skirts to her waist, and pleasure her with _just_ his fingers _for an hour_. _See_ her cheeks blush with heat, _feel_ her fingers _claw_ into his jacket, his lips would be on her neck to drive _her mad_ all the more. And he would swallow her every breathy moan into his kiss, and feel her body keen and arch against his for more. Then, after she’d climaxed enough times to his satisfaction – _three or four, maybe_ – he’d slip away to dinner without a word, just a hungry kiss, and see _how_ she’d go about pursuing him.

He takes a deep breath, coming back down to earth from the heights of his lustful delirium. He cocks his 20 bore, and aims it to the horizon, smiling inwardly as he remembers the taste of their kiss not half an hours previous. _Her sweet lips pressed against his, tasted of warm earl grey she’d taken at breakfast._ He recalls how they both growled in frustration at one another’s clothes being in the way, when they were pressed against that tree, when all there had been _last night_ was bedsheets and hot, naked skin. All that could be heard between them were moans, whispers, gasps and breathy pleas and scant - _but so passionate_ \- declarations of love. He was ascertain her shoulders and neck were almost _entirely_ black and blue from his teeth as of last night. And if _not_ , then that was his _goal_ for today. _That,_ and _one other pressing_ matter that _urgently_ needs attending…

He barely knows how he aims straight when his mind is so affixed on other matters, yet, he manages to hit two more birds cleanly.

Miss _Perky_ Chittock, flatters his strong arms and his excellent aim. And asks if he has any activity planned for this afternoon, for she disclosed, she’d _simply adore_ to take a turn with him about the fine gardens… Thomas turned to her, though she was a _terminally determined flirt_ , she was clearly conjuring up a naughty romantic, vision of stealing a kiss away in the rose gardens, with him, the dashing rogue. She was a _darling_ girl, pretty too, and one day, _maybe_ , she’d find a man to fulfil that fantasy with. _But it would not be him_.

He reaches for her hand and presses a kiss to her suede gloves.

“It is with my _deepest regret_ madam, that I must say, sadly I am _spoken for_ this afternoon.” He smiles at her. Her face falls gently.

“I beg to hope you are _not affronted_ by my rejection. I merely believe in _being forthright_. So that you may find a gentleman _who is_ deserving of your _beautiful_ smile, very fine dress, and _company_ for this afternoon.” He tells her. She blushes and sidles away. Bobbing a cute curtsey as she left. He watches her go to a gaggle of her friends, _doubtlessly_ , to talk about the compliment he’d just gifted her with.

He passes the gun over to his friendly loader, thanks him, and pets the lab who’d gone on the fetch for his fallen game. He sinks to a crouch and rubs the dogs velveteen ears in a loving caress as its tails wags happily, and its tongue lolls.

The blaring of the hunting horn, signifies the end of the drive. He peers around and sees Vianne walk with the Earl back to the house, offering her his arm as escort, which she gingerly takes. Though he can’t say he can _fully stomach_ the sight of another man twining his arm with hers, the Earl was one of the _least_ nauseating people here. He was a decent man, a gambler, but _not_ a womaniser. Besides, if he remembers, the man was promised to an heiress from Maine, whose father was an American oil magnate. That settles his blood to know another man will not be _forcing_ his way into flirtation - _or bed_ \- with her.

He watches her walk off, _mesmerised_ by the sway of her hips under her dress, that striking body of hers, curved, _gorgeous,_ in _all_ the proper places.

That waist he could span with his two hands. And the hipbones that his hands _itched_ to trace, to take in his palms, and _tug_ her close, into his own body, feeling her velveteen skin. And underneath those drawers, stockings, and petticoats, he knew lay a pair of beautifully supple legs that were _long_ enough to wrap around his body whilst he lay between them and pleasured her.

He’d always recognised in himself, a _fascination_ with women’s bodies. The softness of them, their skin, so _pale and tender_ against his. Their softness seemed the most natural remedy to rival his hardness. It was true, in his time, he’d seduced _many_ a woman, _but none_ had ever touched his blackened heart and soul like Vianne James. And his brain reminds him, _that before last night_ , it had been _two long, dry years_ , since he’d entwined himself with a lovely, soft, smaller form of female limbs alike those of his ex-wife.

_And hers was a form he’d never be able to forget._

Shapely legs, a more than ample backside and thighs. Delightful, warm, plump, and _perfect._ Breasts that seemed designed for his hands, the hint of a rounded, soft belly. His mouth salivated. _All of it was perfection. As was all of her. And he hungered for every inch. For the feel of her, warm, soft, beside him, under him. Surrounding him in every sense._

As much as he wanted to reel her close, and kiss her _insensible_ with desire and lust. This other matter clamours for attention in his head. He patted his overcoat pocket. Now was his chance _to seize_.

He turned his head from Vianne, and searched the crowds for his target. Who by sheer luck, was still aiming after an elusive mallard, far away from the crowds. He heard the foul man bark at his loader that he was _useless_ , that he’d do the _damn_ job himself. Thomas sneered a smile as he wandered closer. They were almost enclosed in this part of the woods. A small copse, situated on a hill, overlooking down to the gardens and the back of Briarwell. He stepped towards Henry. Armed with no more than his desire for Vianne, and his bravery. He steps towards his lovers fiancé who was holding a _shotgun_. This could have a very grave ending. But he wasn’t even the least bit scared. _He was exhilarated_.

Exhilarated to, at last, free _his_ woman from the torment of her _violent_ , _ill_ _mannered_ , captor. He doesn’t even _flinch_ as Henry fires a couple of sharp rounds off into the forest. Clearly not wanting to stop until he’d won. _How telling_.

Thomas failed to fight off a crooked smile as the mallard flew away, quacking its head off, away into the density of the trees about them. Henry turned to his side, cocking his weapon and angrily shoving more shells down into it, hissing with rage. _He’d be frothing at the mouth by the time Thomas had finished._

“Not having _much luck_ , St Clair?” Thomas asks him.

Henry side eyes the man and reloads his gun with a furious sounding click. His hands moving sharply. His rage and frustration present in his hunched shoulders and stiff demeanour. Thomas wondered if the man was _only capable of_ smiling when the opportunity of flirting, and bedding a debutante came around. Thomas stood not too far from him. His hands behind his back. His mood, as ever, was sly, buoyant, and arrogant. He relocates his eyes to his gun and weighs it in his hands. He speaks without meeting the mans eyes.

“Have you seen my fiancée?” He asks grumpily. With little patience.

Thomas smirks.

“ _A lot_ more than you’d _like_.” He answers cockily. Henrys head jerks sharply up to meet Thomas’s confident eyeline.

“You keep your _hands_ , off her.” Henry growls, stepping toe to toe with him. They are both equals in height. Thomas’s smirk causes the vermillion scar to crumple on his cheek, creasing the crow’s feet by his eyes.

“I can’t promise she’ll keep hers, _off me_.” Thomas tells him seriously. Henry’s blood began to _boil_.

“She’ll _never go near_ you. _I’ll_ make sure of that.” He promises, stepping past the man and around him, walking away. Shutting him out.

“If you think I’m going to let you _bully_ and _torment_ her much longer, you’re sadly _mistaken_.” Thomas insists, his voice had a bite to it, like the cold punch of frost to ones lungs on the first sharp breath of a winters morning.

“I’ll _think and do_ what _I like. Sharpe_. I wont be governed by a rogue like you who seduces anything _that moves.”_   Henry barks back at him. _Funny,_ Thomas thinks inwardly to himself, _the only woman I’ll ever want to seduce is none other than your fiancée._ _Unlike you, St Clair,_ _who shags any woman who so much as bats their lashes at him._

“ _How odd._ I was just _thinking_ of your Fiancée too.” He begins, wetting his lips, and sauntering closer to Henry so his words wouldn’t be overheard. Henry went stiff. His back to Thomas. Grabbing every word Sharpe muttered to him.

“ _I’m_ thinking about how I spent a significant amount of _my_ night, last night, between _her_ thighs. I’m thinking about how she clutched, _hard_ , onto me and moaned my name. How _she moaned_ _my name for more_. How perfectly she _tastes and cums_. I’m thinking about how stunningly lovely she looks when _she’s naked_. And how _you_ , are an _ignorant, cruel, stupid oaf, w_ ho _doesn’t know_ half of the erotic allure of the woman he’s engaged too. Because, _believe me,_ me and _many others_ have noticed when you seem so keen to _ignore_ her for _every_ vain deb in sight.” He tells the man. Quite prepared for his response…

Henry whips round, his _eyes hard_ and his jaw set in rage, the man was almost _trembling_ with anger. Thomas isn’t in the least bit surprised to find his finger on the trigger of the gun, and the barrel pointed _straight_ at his midsection. What Henry wasn’t to know, was that Thomas had reflexes as quick as a cat, and that Henry was letting his anger blind him. He merely smirked more and stepped closer, right up to the shotgun, so that it jutted into his ribs.

“ _Go ahead._ St Clair. If _you’re idiot enough_ to kill me right _here,_ in front of…” He sucks in air through his teeth and twists his head around to count the people, milling around in the forest behind them. “ _20, or so_ witnesses.” He jabs. Poking the proverbial bear statured man with a stick. Oddly, Thomas found some long deserved pleasure in watching the bulky man flounder in rage. Being bested by him.

“ _You’d hang_ for it.” Thomas tells to the sick pleasure dancing in the mans eyes that made him believe he _might just_ do it, _and damn_ the consequences. _Damn_ them right up to the point they’d loop a noose around his thick neck.

“You’ll _regret_ this, you _swine_.” Henry seethes through clenched teeth. Before he then sneers. “ _She’ll regret_ it too. I’ll personally see to that.” He threatens.

In a blow _so quick_ , Henry stumbled backwards, Thomas tore the gun from his hands. Cocked it so the shells ejected out, clattering to his shoes, he then lobbed the useless gun metres away from Henry’s reach. He steps up close. thereafter. And his icy stare could have turned even the most dangerous man in the world, to _stone_. The revulsion evident on his features could rival hells fury itself.

“You lay _another hand_ on her again in violence, I will _snap_ your cowardly spine into _pieces_.” He warns. “Its _your turn_ to stay away from her now. You will go back into that house, this very afternoon, and _break_ your engagement with her. But so as not to cause her _further undue_ pain  and embarassment, you will _atleast_ afford her the honour of breaking after this week is _out_ , and you return to London.” Thomas tells the loathsome man.

“And if _I don’t?”_ Henry asks, feigning boredom.  Hating being given orders. He gets right up close to Thomas face and sneers at him. “You have _nothing_ on me, and you don’t _frighten_ me.”

“I _should_.” Thomas warns in a calm voice. _Because I’ve gotten blood on my hands before and if you don’t keep away from her, I’ll have yours, you cretin._ He thinks.

“ _Not_ working.” Henry spits.

“That’s because you’re _not clever.”_   Thomas admits in insult. Before his hand reaches for his overcoat top pocket and slams the brown paper envelope stashed within to Henry’s chest. The little envelope. Contained within was one man’s _ruin._

“You _keep away_ from her, you break with her, meeting the conditions as I say, and this _offending article of filth_ won’t _reach all_ the gossip sheets, and every society column, from _lands’ end_ to the very last _curling spray_ of the waves on the outer Hebrides.” Henry rips the packet from the mans grip and looks inside. Rage bubbling up in his gut. He didn’t have the capacity to feel _shame, or guilt._ Thomas felt sick when his private investigator unearthed the photograph within, or more than, _explicit_ , content.

Henry had amassed a _ream_ of women across London. And featured within were just some of the _‘souvenirs’_ of his rutting pastimes with opera singers, actresses, and widows. Most of them were shocking to look at, _all the women he’d bedded_ , in various states of lingerie, or _nakedness._ The one that really made Thomas’s bitter heart, _harden_ , was the snapshot of Rosamund Price. _Viannes friend._ Stark naked as the day she was born, posing seductively for her lover. The shot made to _entice_ him back into her boudoir. As was the sickly perfume staining the photograph, along with the smear of lipstick that left its cloying kiss to the bottom right of the shot. Thomas almost crumpled the offending thing to _dust_ in his hands when he saw it.

Henry looked ready to _explode_. His face red, every vein straining under his skin.

“I have paid eyes and ears _all over London_ , every street corner, and every alley. Henry. And you’re in a _dire, dire_ , position and wanted by every last card shark and low life gambler east of the Thames. I’d watch _your tread_ , otherwise your address may _accidentally slip_ from my lips, and find its way to unpalatable men who want _your head_ on a platter.” He pledges. “And even if you burn every last _morsel and scrap_ of your indecency and infidelity to Vianne, or try _to hide_ what kind of low life, _duplicitous bastard_ you are, my advice is this; _Don’t bother_. I have the photo plates too.” He finishes.

“All this trouble for _one_ lousy _, uptight,_ woman?” Henry asks him mockingly. Thomas wanted to cave the man’s face in with his fists. He wanted to break his nose and beat him senseless. He wanted to feel the mans skull cave under the brute force of his bare hands.

“She’s worth more to me than a vile man like you _will ever_ comprehend. And unless you fancy a broken nose, I’d _guard_ _your tongue, too.”_  He suggests. Now he was done with the man, he glares, and steps around him, intending to head back to the house. Away from the man who sickened him down to the _very marrow_ of his bones.

“You think I’m going to _stand here_ and let you _take her from me_ without a single _protest?”_   Henry snaps after him.

“You’re far too _precariously placed_ to challenge me, St Clair.” Thomas fights back. Snarling. Amazed the lout thought he still had a foot to stand on.

“And may I point out that if you expected her to stay loyal and silent to your side, maybe you should have treat her with the modicum of respect, _love_ and civility _she deserves._ And acted as a man a woman could be _faithful too._ Instead you kept her _bound_ and _cowering_ in her promise to you. You know she is _honourable,_ and that she _wouldn’t go back_ on her word. You kept her miserable whilst you had your fun. And I will do all in my power to sever her ties to you. Because _I love her_. _More_ than you can ever know. And protecting her from the likes of you, and your foul friends, is _my greatest, utmost_ , privilege.”

Henry scoffed. “Like you’re such an _honourable_ gentleman…” He digs.

“I _never claimed_ to be a gentleman.” Thomas sneers in a promise. “ _I’m not_ a gentleman. But I _am_ a man who will _break_ your _arm off_ should you raise it to touch Vianne once more. Yet, this point seems to evade you. So allow me to _speak plainly_ …” He begins.

“Vianne _is mine_.” Thomas warns him.

“…And if you come within _a metre_ of her again, I will make your life _hell. Trust me to be sincere on that.”_

“Scaring me off _won’t work_. Sharpe. But payment _might_ …” He pipes up.

Thomas chuckles wryly. _The insolent bastard._

“I’m not giving you a _single damn_ penny.” Thomas told him firmly.

“Pity.” Henry smirks. In a manner that made him look like he was thoroughly reconsidering parting from his fiancée so willingly. “You don’t know, _do you?”_ He asks Thomas.

“Know _what?”_ Thomas spits angrily.

“She has kept a _few secrets_ from you then…” Henry smiles. It gelled well with his sociopathic character. Only to smile when in _detriment_ of others.

“ _If she has_ , then they are the kind of secrets _every woman_ has the right to keep.” Thomas insists.

“ _We’ll see_ about that.” Henry glares. “They might be secrets that make you _think twice_ about loving her.”

“You think my affection for her is _a fickle_ thing?” Thomas raised a sardonic eyebrow.

“We’ve barely been at Briarwell _for a day_ , and _I’ve_ already bedded her, kissed her, spent the night with her. Right under your stupid nose. _So no_. As I’ve proven, _not even_ the threat of you pointing a 20 bore at me will make me _think twice_ about loving her. _I will_ love that woman til every last star in the heavens goes out, which is more than can be said for _you.”_  Thomas growls, reaching forwards and stabbing Henry savagely in the chest with one finger as he spoke. He eyed Henry up and down, and gives one last insult. “You couldn’t even keep faithful to her _through dinner_.”

He turned on his heel and headed for the house. Henry, thoughtless though he was, didn’t retort a word. Thomas took that as his surly answer. Vianne _was his_ for the taking. _At last._

 

 

~

 

 

The game lunch after the drive was held in the barn on the southwest of Briarwell’s property. The staff had truly transformed the space. A white linen cloth table, lined with hurricane lamps and candles, and rose centrepieces, the silver cutlery shone proud, polished to within an inch of its life. They’d even managed to suspend a candle chandelier from the beams high above. Footmen glided around serving a huge silver platter of the freshly caught game, which had been plucked and roasted by the kitchens, all of it tasted wonderful. Rich game birds served with sauce that left Vianne wanting to mop up the entirety of her plate, were she not in the presence of lords.

Rich spices of brandy, red wine, and cooked meats linger in the air, wetting her appetite to the point her stomach groaned _loudly_ in wanting of it. Pot roast pheasant, served with parsnips, bacon, shallots and carrots. The grouse was roasted with beetroot and blackcurrants, and a dash of whiskey. The rabbit stew looks to die for, served with golden potatoes and boiled greens. A grand gamekeepers pie, pastry golden and flaky, moulded with ornamental trimming, was the table showstopper. Filled with rabbit, hare, pigeon and venison. All cooked in a red wine gravy that thickened with the meats, the scent of which is driving her _to distraction_. She hadn’t seen eating like this since she was a child, and her _mother insisted_ on such grand affairs and dinner parties such as this, at Roseland, her family home.

She can remember the dining room at her childhood home, dressed in such splendour. The walls hung with garlands, every piece of silver shining, flowers towering as centrepieces on the table. Candles glittering their merry golden light, to last all night as a soft, romantic glow.

As a child, she used to watch through the stair banisters, and watch the ladies and gentleman come dressed in their finery. The women swathed in furs, diamonds and silks. Pearls, velvet and so much trimming, colours, lace, and ornamental beauty it quite made her _head spin_. The Gentlemen all looked dashing and trim in their white tie, bowties knotted _perfectly, stretched tall_ and elegant figures in their jet black suits.

She _was always_ afforded a private view into this glamorous world, as a more than cherished only child. Before dinner, guests would gather in the parlour for an aperitif, and Nanny Jephson would lead her down in her nightgown and dressing gown, with her paper curls in place, to bid her parents goodnight as their evening began, and hers came to an end. Her father would pull her onto his lap and keep her entertained with his _poorly practiced_ magic tricks of finding pennies behind her ears. He would kiss her goodnight, and her mother would too, hugging her as she introduced her darling daughter to her companions, all of whom exclaimed how _pretty and darling_ she looked. She might even be pressed upon to amaze them all with her well versed French, _as she’d been practicing_. After Nanny Jeph came to lead her away, up above stairs, for a bedtime story, they’d all exclaim to her mother that she was _adorable,_ and _so very_ bright. Her father always insisted, grinning proudly, that _his Vianne_ was his bright little spark; and she’d _do great things_ someday.

Caught in her reverie, she realised she is staring unwittingly at a rose centrepiece, she refocuses on the current, and reaches for a glass of brandy the footman hands her.

The loaders, lady companions, and sportsmen all dine together, each given a deep domed glass of warmed brandy to sip to keep the cold away. She wasn’t one for spirits, but the spicy, ginger  and honey infused brandy _sits well_ and sharp on her tongue. Slipping down her belly and warming her. Vianne kept up her conversation with the Earl, whom she was sat near. Henry was far away down the table _, thank god_ , and she was trying not to let herself meet Thomas’s eyes _too often_ , as he sat adjacent, conversing handsomely with Miss Lampshire.

Whenever his eyes met hers, he was rewarded with _a flush_ of rosy pink to her cheeks, and she fought back a giddy smile. She almost jumped out of her skin, and her gut coiled _tight_ with longing when she felt his shoe scuff gently to nudge into her own foot and up her ankle. Gooseflesh rippled up her legs, and the hair on the back of her neck needled in lustful awareness. And that flush he loved to cause overtook not just her cheeks, but also her neck _and_ chest too.

Luckily at that point, she just speared her fork into her breast of pheasant and looked down to place the delicate morsel in her mouth, when she dared look back up, her thighs squirmed and squeezed together at the look in Thomas’s eyes, as he smirks and sips his red wine like _a king_. _A very seductive one, at that._

“Are you _well, Miss James?”_ Comes an enquiring voice from beside her from the Earl. His voice was sure and strong, and hard, like cut glass.

“Your  cheeks look a _little heated.._ ” He supposed as he busied himself topping up both their red wine glasses.

She places a dainty hand over her mouth as she chews her mouthful, embarrassed she’d been caught flushing like a _schoolgirl_ because of her sweetheart. She gives him a shaky smile. He was her age, and could cause many a flushed cheek to _any_ young lady should he wish too. 

“Perfectly well. I think _the brandy_ is to be blamed for my pinkened cheeks…” She laughs slightly. The Earl side eyed her nicely and gave her a burgeoning smile. He was a handsome fellow, his hair was dark, but when it caught the candlelight, it was a dusky chestnut red, he had broad, classical handsome features. Strong brow, a sure, straight nose, and warm, dark eyes. Thomas carefully let his eyes slide to her as she wasn’t looking. He watched her tuck a coil of hair behind her ear. _That was her nervous tick, she was trying to distract from her flushed state he was cheekily causing._

“ _Not_ a spirit drinker then?” The Earl asked her, as the silver grouse plate came his way and he served himself a portion.

“Very _much not.”_ She awards him. Chuckling. “ _A good_ red wine is my poison now and again. And maybe a nip of sherry. But that’s _as exciting_ as my drinking gets. It must be the medical practitioner in me.” She supposes. He laughs a throaty chuckle to that.

“How is your Miss Saunders faring?” Vianne asks him politely. “I heard she sails to Southampton _soon?_ ” She enquires. The Earl was to be wedded in the Autumn to Maude Saunders, an American girl, whose father was a rich magnate in the oil industry. Vianne had caught a picture of her in some gossip column. And she was listed in Barnaby’s landed Gentry as an eligible heiress. She was dainty and demure looking, with dreamy blue eyes, and a smile as pink and sweet as rosehip syrup, and hair the colour of fine wheat under a golden sun.

Vianne had met her at some ball or other before Maude had to return to her Aunt in Chicago. She was different to other ladies, she had a laugh and smile she oft employed and she never seemed to suffer from nervousness or lack of confidence, she had a canny American spirit. Vianne had _liked her instantly_.

“She sails next month, to start planning on the wedding with my step-mother at Carswell.” He tells her with a smile that spoke of how much he loved his bride-to-be.

“You two are most welcome to tea _anytime_ you should like before or after your nuptials. I’ll dust off _my best china_ and _pray_ my cooks coffee comes up to scratch to be _pleasing.”_ She smiles. Remembering how Miss Saunders had baulked upon tasting English coffee. She’d heard coffee imported from Turkey was supposed to be very excellent. And served black as writing ink, with a sprinkling of cinnamon, or brown sugar. She’d even heard in hotter climates, they drank it with a dash of _salt_.

“She _would adore that_. She said after she met you ‘ _It was nice to meet a proper English redhead who didn’t have her drawers in such a twist about proper goddamned etiquette_.”

Vianne laughed. Her shoulders arching forwards. Thomas’s eyes flicked to them both, they were smiling and conversing. He wondered if he should be envious of his causing his lady laughter, and whether any flirting was taking place. But he saw the look of platonic _geniality_ in the Earl’s eyes and Vianne’s smile was wide and not uneasy. They were acquainted. And fondly conversing.

“I hope you both agree we are each _very uncommon_ ladies.” She flatters herself with a smile.

“Maude is _as uncommon_ as they come, plus _she’s American.”_  He told, as if the mere factor itself deemed her to ridicule already. He said it with jovial teasing about his intended.

To some people of English Edwardian Society, of course it was. ‘ _An American’_ was said in roughly the same tone as that of _‘A rodent.’_  

They were seen as ‘ _Gaudy, brash, and uncommonly loud, patriotic charlatans, with no sense of decorum.’_ Vianne remembers when Maude heard of this American stereotype, and she threw her head back and laughed in a way ladies were taught not too. After wiping tears or mirth from her eyes, she’d exclaimed _“Oh, that_ tickled me.”

Vianne then felt inclined to add that all Americans believed English people to be _‘Stiff-upper-lipped, tea drinking, duplicitous snobs, whom had bad teeth and awkward backwards manners.’_  Her and Maude had exploded into peels of laughter to that. Maude had clapped Vianne on the back and said she was getting _‘this gal’_ another glass of champagne, cause she was a lot of fun to talk too. They’d made firm friends in each other in one night. Unfortunately she’d sailed to New York again shortly afterward, but said she’d love to see Vianne again ‘ _when she was next in London town.’_

“And I _must agree_ , you are _very exceptional_ too. In _the best_ of ways. To Rare women…” He congratulated. Clinking his wine glass with hers in a toast to such ladies everywhere. “ _Wherever_ they may be. Long may we _know them_ , _raise them_ , and _associate_ with them. And life shall never _be dull.”_  He adds before he drinks, she does the same and smiles. He was a breath of fresh air, the Earl of Westcot.

A ripple of feminine laughter burst from the other end of the table. Vianne turned her eyes, after standing her wine down, to see another debutante she didn’t know the name of, dangling off Henry’s arm, giggling up a storm as he flirted.

The sight of it didn’t hurt her. She wasn’t even sure it _bothered her_ either. She refocused on her pheasant, and the Earl. Who had also noticed…

“Your man plays the fields rather precariously, does _he not?”_  He asked Vianne in a dulcet tone of shock and aversion.

“His _‘playing’_ is a constant these days.” She remarks. Placing a sauce soaked morsel of roast parsnip in her mouth. There came a giggle from the deb again. The Earl turned to look Vianne in the face, trying to read how she felt.

“Don’t let a man _like that_ , make a _bright spark like you_ settle for misery, James.” He shakes his head and narrows his eyes, leaning closer so no one overheard him.

She crooked an honest smile. Thinking for a moment. “You’re _very kind_.”

“I’ve _known men_ like him. They are _dozens_ of men in society alike him. He will _never be content_. They use women like disposable pleasures, and they latch on to a rich wife, have affair after affair, and ignore their spouse. If you wed him, from the day you _say ‘I do’_ you’d be _miserable._ ” He tells her seriously.

Vianne must have given him a hurt expression, because he eluded more.

“My father was a _man like that_. He only married my mother _for her money_. He made her wretched by it. Fast women, fast ponies. Scandal beget scandal in our house. She died of a broken heart whilst he was in the arms of _another woman_ in a _less than respectable establishment._ That kind of ruin society will never forget or forgive. I was eleven years old when she died, and _I’ve hated_ the old boar ever since. We never speak.” He tells her quietly. Vianne looked at him with her brows drawn in empathy.

“You know your man has been _banned_ from _every_ gambling establishment in London.” He tells her. Vianne scoffs. _That was no surprise…_

“I was _not privy_ to that information.” She speaks lowly.

“I was at White’s last week and he tried so desperately to _weasel his way in_ , stinking drunk, demanding notice. The club owner threw him out almost right away. He was raving about going to an opium den instead. That man can’t even pay off meagre _card debts.”_ They both looked down the table to see Henry smile and flirt some more.

“Some days, I wish I _never met him._ ” Vianne disclosed.

If it wasn’t drink, it was _women_ , if not women, it was _money_ , if not that, then it was the _opium, or cocaine_. _He had too many vices to count._ Many times he’d been suspected of stealing it from the hospital stores for personal, _recreational_ use. But he waved away those silly accusations with disdain and rage… Vianne wished to say she knew he was above that. _But truthfully_. He was not. Henry was a spoilt, entitled snob and a sociopathic bully who felt he deserved _all things,_ and everything was within his right.

_Why had it taken her so long to realise this? how wretched she would be with him. How had she allowed this facade to run its course for this long? Was she mad?_

He could have everything. He could have the world, _and it still wouldn’t be enough_.

Over time, she knew, he’d bleed her dry of her _spirit, love, compassion_ and _money_. She’d be an elderly husk, a cold old crone who hated her husband for his lifestyle whilst she sat at home, _alone._

_Thing was... she’d had enough of being alone._

Henry could have everything, she decided in a moment of utter clarity. _But the one thing h_ _e could no longer have was her heart, or her hand. She was taking herself, her money and her life, off the table from his clutches._

She looked across to Thomas, who was tipping his wine glass up to his lips once more, as his eyes met her, a jolt of pure, _carnal_ , longing made her lose her breath in an instant. She holds his look, only for a second, and the passion sparks hot in the air about them. She started to breathe raggedly. what he did to her was nothing short of sinful. _This_ was the man she loved and wanted.

The Earl leaned closer to her again. _“Break with him_. James. And if he _dares_ to contest you _in any_ manner, you _refer him_ to me. I'll _knock his silly skull in_ for you. Find someone who… _won’t_ make you _a martyr_ to their happiness and _greed.”_  He hushes softly. 

She smiles, brightly.

“I think I _already have…”_ She tells him openly, but hushed and smiling.

The Earl smiled and nods, his eyes flicker only _briefly_ , across the table. _In Thomas's direction._ She panicked idly, wondering if he had seen their loving stares directed toward each other.

He turns back to her and grins charmingly.

 _“Atta_ Girl.” He winks, holding up the red carafe. “More _wine?”_ He asks handsomely, pouring her another large glass.

 

 ~

 


	32. Briarwell VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Easy Living - Billie Holliday

 

 

~

 

The shooting party returned to the house for the afternoon, to change out of their heavy tweeds, and go about the rest of their day in whatever manner they choose. Vianne slipped away to her room to change into a less cumbersome gown. A cobalt blue hobble skirt, and a three quarter length blouse and patterned teal lace chemise, she, _of course_ , kept her earrings in. As everyone else took to their leisure, she knew of _one_ place she wanted to go. _The library._

She wanted some _much needed solace_ from the company of others. She needed the familiar quiet distraction of a book. Get lost in _another place_ for a while to better forget her own. She wants to feel the must of paper under her fingers and the cotton slither of a dusty page being turned. She wants the _only words she hears_ to be those of _an author_ reaching out to her through their pages.

She slips unnoticed through the house. Other ladies took to their needlepoint, or to recite Chopin for others amusement _\- and gratification -_ on the parlour piano.

Some went out to the cooler air of the sun warmed garden to sketch, or to take a turn, though it was _too cold_ to make a proper day out of it.

She moves quickly past the music room as she hears some poor – _sadly tone deaf girl_ – attempt to sing an aria. The fact her ears were _protesting_ at the shrill pitch made her _hurry along_ to the library all the more. When she gets there, she is _beyond relieved_ to find it empty. The only sound filling it coming from the crackling of a blazing fire in the hearth. She _gladly_ shuts the door by pressing her back to it and sighing a thanks to the heavens that it was a most heavy door, and as such, _muffled all sound_ coming from beyond.

Her arms fall exhausted to her sides, and her head _thunks_ against the door. She lets out _a relaxing sigh._ Away from _keen_ eyes and _cruel_ mouths she let her shoulders slump and she feels she can make use of her _true_ personality again. She fidgets with the urge to lock the door, then decides against it.

Someone else might need solace and she _would not_ be the one to _deny them so_. Unlike the library with the secret door she and Thomas had stolen a few moments in, this library was _far_ bigger, situated off the front lawn of the house. 

She breaks away from the door and heads for the far side of the room, past the fireplace, and around the end table, stepping onto the thick cushion of the Aubusson rug, she heads for the bookshelf wedged in the corner of the room by the sun drenched window. She places her hands on her hips and let her eyes scan the shelves. She was relieved to see a few she was _familiar with_. Anatomy, physiology, books by prominent surgeons. Phrenology, biology of the human body and other such works. She selects a fat, red leather volume by an Austrian physician, Dr Vostenn, on human physiology. She weighs it in her hands, and opens it. She is rewarded with a creaking crack of unused pages when she peels it open to reveal its secrets.

She smiles lightly, her head bowed, she opens the first page and lets her eyes scan along the small, neat text. _Lost,_ for a moment, the whole world around her seems to be _blotted out_ of focus.

A sharp gasp rattles her body, and she goes rigid when a hand _curls_ around her hip and pulls her back into a muscular body, at the same time, her eyes are covered by another hand. Her chest heaves and her cheeks flare hot when she feels scorching breath slide along the side of her neck, raising Goosebumps.

She wants to protest and squirm, but then… _she knows that touch…_ she knows the pair of lips that speak, close to her neck, just below her ear. _Almost kissing her skin_ , whispering soft and luscious against her.

Her skin prickles with sudden awareness. _He’d slunk up behind her like a tomcat when her back was turned_. Her heart _pounded_ with excitement in his being near.

“We _are like_ minded, my love. Did you want to escape that _godawful_ _racket too?”_  Thomas asks her, crooning a handsome whisper in her ear.

“Well, _it’s one_ of the contributing factors to my being in here. But I did wish for some time alone.”

“Shall I _leave?”_ He asks, his scorching breath hovers closer to her neck, his lips speak against her jawline, and then he presses a soft kiss there. She was alight with lust and sparking nerves crackled from _head to toe_ in sexual awareness.

“Seeings as I’ve waited _all morning_ since the drive to _kiss you again_..” She smiles, letting the sentence hang in the air.

Another gentle kiss lands on her neck, below her ear. Her head falls back, her neck laid out for him as her head leans to his shoulder. He fought the urge to _graze_ his teeth along that _divine_ column of her throat. With each kiss he felt her pulse _thrum_ wildly against his lips.

“I could _never leave_ you _wanting…”_ He growls against her ear. She could feel his smile, and it makes her _giddy. Senseless_.

“When you’re _around me, Thomas_. My whole body seems _to know it.”_  She tells him. He smiles more against her.

“I’m glad to hear I have _such a force_ over your body.” He grins.

She chuckles, her hand covering the one that slid over her eyes, he peels it away and she twists in his arms to find herself pressed chest to chest with him. His hand slides to cup her neck.

He walks their entwined form backwards and keeps her held up against the wall, in between the corner and the bookcase. She brings one hand up to rest on his shoulder, sighing in pleasure at the weight of him pressing into her. Her free hand still held the verbose book down by her side.

He leans, close enough to kiss. _But he doesn’t. Not yet._  He was close enough to see each underlying _spec_ of colour around her irises. Close enough to _taste_ her sweet breath against his. To scent her _familiar_ aroma. Clean, warm, soap, with traces of vanilla, and faded French perfume.

She’d never seen him look _so intent_. His brow was furrowed, and she feels like _the only woman on earth._

“Hardest thing I’ve _ever had_ to do. To sit _so near, so close_ to you at that lunch, and _not_ be able to kiss you… _like this…”_   He whispers.

His eyes part from hers and focus on her lips, which slowly part, swallowing as she struggled for breath in this _hot, arousing_ embrace. He tilts his head, and his thumb comes up to _softly_ brush across her lower lip. The pad of it _so soft_ and sweetly pressing against her, as he savours her, making her knees _tremble_ in anticipation.

Just when she thought she’d somehow _burst and then melt_ into incoherent sobs of longing, he _kisses_ her.

His forehead presses into her own and _all at once_ his lips press to hers. She inhales a low whimper at _how good_ it felt to embrace this man.

Her brows lift and she lets passion invade her, though they are pressed close, they _curl_ into each other with this kiss. Her back arches and the book slips from her limp hand, thudding to the carpet below, they don’t _even register it._ Neither of them do.

His hands _snatch_ for her hips and brings her body completely into his with such urgency her heart skips. This left them with _no space to spare_ , her arms wrap around his neck, when her fingernails scratch against his nape, he growls, and bites gently on her lower lip, the moan she made when they broke away for breath is _so arousing_ , she feels her stomach quake with hunger and longing. When they break, their breath _furnaces_ each other’s lips, Vianne feels _so boneless_ , and aching for _more._

 _Mercy me,_ she sighs, _this man knows how to kiss…_

Thomas pants, smirking as he kisses down her neck, and when he speaks, his voice is _hoarse_. The scraping, husky tones of which serve to make her heart turn _somersaults_ in her body. She felt like she’d fall off the face of this earth were she not _clutching onto him._ _He kissed her as if she were air, and he were gasping for breath._

“Let’s stay in here _all afternoon_ , _secreted_ away from that elite, snobbish crowd beyond _those doors…_ ” He sighs, his teeth nipping against her neck. She tilts her neck, giving him more access.

“There’s _nothing_ I desire more.” Vianne smiles, her breath hitches when his lips touched to the small patch of her shoulder, slipping under her thin blouse, where it had ridden up her back when she threw her arms around him, his thumb finds an exposed spot of hot skin near her waist, when he skims it, she flushes with heat.

“There’s _one thing I desire greatly_. But I’m afraid it wouldn’t _be decent_ to do so in a library, in _broad daylight..”_ He whispers.

He nuzzles down into her neck and presses _one more_ kiss there, sending pleasant sensations to rocket through her. _He knew the potency of kissing her neck, her weak spot. He hadn’t dared forgotten._ She was beginning to suspect he hadn’t risked forgetting _a single detail_ about her.

He draws away, after one more _long kiss_ to her lips. They were promised to _have_ each other tonight, when all others were abed, and _their secret_ could remain _safe_. If he kisses her much more, now, he’d pin her to the settee opposite, lift her skirts and _ravish her senseless._

Which _wouldn’t do_ if an unwitting debutante or gentleman glided through the library doors. _They’d be ruined_.

He could stomach the shadowy nature of his own reputation, the _looks_ he received, the _whispers_ that flourished behind his back in sordid speculation. _But on his own life,_ he _would not have_ Vianne ruined before society.

He sinks to a crouch and picks up the book their kiss caused her to drop. His knees click as he does, reminding him he wasn’t as young as he liked to be, anymore, and when he rises to a stand, he takes the book in hand, and examines it. Reading the title, he smiles. He offers it back to her and she beams back, in accepting it.

“A _good read?”_ He asks her with interest, still stood close, leaning one shoulder against the bookshelf. Her hand fidgets to curl through his hair, and right the mussed mess she made during their kiss.

“Not _bad._ ” She offers. “A _bit_ far-fetched… but his thesis is usually _very strong.”_ She tells him. She narrows her eyes looking at him.

“Do _you really wish_ to hear this?” She asks with a curling, almost bewildered smile.

“I’m a _curious man_. I wanted to know what _takes your interest_ in terms of literature.” He supposes, those keen eyes watching her intently.

“Mostly, anatomy textbooks, and medical journals, _these days_ …” She informs him.

“Nothing for…” he smirks. _“Pleasure?”_ he asks in a sinful growl. Raising one dark brow in amusement at her. she flushed.

“I never seem to have time _for pleasure_.” She tells him, leaning closer, her arms crossed at the wrist, holding the book into her blue skirts, her gaze split between his eyes and his lips.

“What a _horrible way_ to live.” He tells her, he too, leaning closer. Flirting back just as much as she was. His eyes looked darker with lust. She smiles a chuckle.

“ _No poetry?_ No…Sonnets? _No romantic stories?_ … ones with the hero _whisking_ the heroine off her feet, onto his dashing white steed and galloping off into the sunset?” He asks.

“I don’t set _much stock_ by fairy tales anymore.” She tells him, a touch sadly, then she regains her joviality. “I rarely indulge in poetry, and I learnt _most_ of Shakespeare’s sonnets by heart when at finishing school, and being forced to word perfect recitation in iambic pentameter does rather _blunt_ the sting of love I felt for them.” She tells him.

She turns to the bookshelf he’d just kissed her against, and scans it for more medical texts of her interest.

 _“And here_ … I thought all ladies who attended finishing school had to read _nothing but_ Jane Austen over and over until they’re _blue_ in the face.” He smiles lightly.

“ _Oh_ , that’s _unfortunately very_ correct. That, and books on how to be a perfect, elegant lady. Insipid, hateful novels that _banish young girls_ from doing _anything untoward.”_ She spoke gravely, though exaggerating. Rolling her eyes.

“I had to curtsey with books on my head. Drink tea noiselessly, learn how to be _utterly_ ornamental in conversation, and most importantly, that _belching,_ was _social ruin.”_  She tells him, to which he loudly sniggers.

“And now, I _am a nurse_ , I fear those coquettish qualities I _had hammered_ into my head, day and night have _, thankfully,_ grown quiet.” She smiles, lifting more books off the shelf to examine.

“I can devote myself to work without fear of my skirts being _too vulgar_ in length…” She jokes.

“And you can read about such, glorious complexities as…” he takes the book gently from her and selects a page, reading it aloud. “… the treatments of peripheral _oedema_.” He nods. She laughs. When he finishes smiling, he looks at her seriously, for a moment.

“You will _never be_ so bland, or brainless, as to be an ornamental woman, Vianne. _Never to me.”_   He assures her, reaching over and gently sliding one finger to twirl around a curled lock of hair at the nape of her neck. The action made her eyes slide shut, and her breath stuttered.

She blushes. And turns to meet his eyes. “I’m glad someone _thinks_ of me _so.”_  

“Having put a year into engagement with _a brute_ who could only seem capable of assuring you _otherwise,_ I fully intend to show you how he is a _lying, blind, fool.”_  He pledges, stroking that same hand that reached for her hair, down her cheek. Feeling the softness of her skin.

“I’d show _you right now_ , if that door was locked.” He purrs. Kissing her cheek gently. She bit her lip. He looked _insatiate._

“If you kissed me again, Thomas, I think _we’d both_ be _in very real danger_ of that becoming a _reality.”_  She tells him in all seriousness. She was stood close now. Close enough to be _tempting_ to him again.

“If I kissed you again right now, Vianne. I safely promise you, I _wouldn’t_ be able to _stop_.” He warns her.

His breathing is _ragged_ , and he can feel his hands _ache_ to take her in his arms again. She leans in, as does he, their lips meet in a _scorching_ kiss and he cups the back of her hair.

He pulls her onto him, one hand _clawing_ into her ass through her skirts, their bodies melt into the others once again. His other arm cradles her back, his bare hand on her shoulder blades, skin to skin, when they break away again she whines in frustration and longing against his lips. Both their needs were becoming _painfully evident_.

“We _need to stop_ kissing _like this_ …” She sighs against his lips. He cups her head harder and kisses _her more_ , _harder,_ in disagreement. They both moaned, _she_ whimpered, _he_ growled. He pulls back and measures her response, her eyes are shut and she is dazed from the brute force of such a kiss.

 _“Stop?”_ He asks her. His words spoken against her mouth, their lips wet, red and bruised from the passionate touch. Both their chests pound in time to each other’s, when her hand touches his chest, he exhales along breath, and she can feel his heart _hammering away_ under his shirt, like a mad thing. He closes his free hand across hers.

“I think it would be _wise_.” She speaks in obvious detriment to pulling away. Cupping the back of his head, grazing her fingers through his hair. She touched him. And just as it was the _first_ time they had ever kissed. _His cold heart cracked open._

“Sod _wise._ ” He laments. His lips are on her again before she can scarce draw breath. He holds her head, cradling it in his large hands, _so soft, so protective_. She felt safe in the haven of his touch, in his arms. She hadn’t felt safe in all her life. But with his arms around her in that minute, and his body entwined with hers, she _finally knew_ what safety felt like.

Vianne smiles, and their kiss breaks. He looks up, into her face, still keeping her close. “What’s _wrong?”_ He asks her, cupping the side of her jaw with one hand.

“Men that know how _to kiss like you_ are a danger to humanity.” She tells him, in a teasing manner. He tilts his head in an accepting nod.

“I don’t wish to be a danger _on all humanity_. Just _on those_ who deem to keep _us_ apart.” He tells, stroking over her smiling lower lip with his thumb again.

She rewards him for that soft, loving little declaration with a gentle, simple kiss to his lips. When her eyes meet his again, her heart _feels full_.

“I never dreamed that this week in the country could _be so_ … _perfect.”_  She tells him, her hands tucking into his chest. His hands looped around her waist, and held her tight. His clasped hands resting on the top of her bottom, and on her lower back. Though she was a head shorter, he didn’t mind stooping. Matter of fact, _he adored it_. She was the perfect height to wrap into his chest. His chin could _comfortably_ rest, nestling, on her hair.

Across the library, the doorknob _rattles_ and _turns._ Vianne’s head bolts round, and Thomas’s eyes snap to the doorway beyond that was now being _pushed_ open from the other side...

They rushed to _disentangle_ themselves. Vianne stepped widely to the side, idly fixing her hair where his fingers had tangled into it.

He smoothed out his shirt, ran a hand through his hair, and made for the armchair far away from her – _though lord knows he didn’t wish to be._ He snagged a book on flora and fauna of Derbyshire from the end table and busied himself pretending to be comfortable in the chair he threw his body into. He crossed his legs and split open his book.

Vianne clutched onto the bookshelf in front of her, putting her back to him as she let her  flushed cheeks _cool_ down, she turns and catches his eyes over her shoulder, _aching_ that they had to be apart and keep up a dreaded facade once more.

Two voices, merry and alight in conversation, shattered the warm silence that the quiet library once had.

Vianne’s heart _sinks_ as she see’s two debs slink through the door, cackling laughter like gulls at one another. Clarice Pendleton and Mary Gamblin.

Clarice was a reed thin blonde, with skin and eyes so fair, she was as pale as and tall as an ivory candle. Except her seafoam green eyes stuck out from her pretty heart shaped face. She was flagged out in a gown of saffron red satin. With a silken lace chemise peeking out from her scalloped neckline.

Her friend, Mary Gamblin, was a sable beauty. With dark hair and darker eyes. Mary’s lips were fuller and her expression and complexion more ruddy than that of her friend, whose expression seemed always pointed and sharp. Mary wore a shade of dark blue teal skirt with a high collared blouse, trimmed with so many ruffles and flounces, it reminded Vianne of a puffing, preening bird showing off its feathers.

She wished that she could call them amiable, and pleasing company. But truth was, they were both too _vivacious_ and _cruel_ to be pleasant. Plus, they were both far too obsessed with _fashionable things_ to be _nice_ people.

They stopped their cackling and broke into polite – _very unconvincing_ – fake smiles, when they saw Thomas sat on the settee. He rather felt like a wildebeest that had just been spotted by two _pouncing_ lionesses. Vianne saw his shoulders fall in his exasperation.

 _“Oh_ ,” Clarice shrilled. Vianne rolled her eyes so far back in her head. “Sir Sharpe. We’d _no idea_ you were in here.” Clarice said with an _overly_ enthusiastic smile. A wicked grin that flashed _too much_ of her small teeth at him.

 _“Truly,_ we’d _no idea_ , did we Mary?” She asked, digging an elbow into her friends ribs.

Vianne wouldn’t have _put it past them_ to follow him around the house, _wherever he went,_ trailing after him like a lost puppy.

“None _at all_.” Mary agreed with a coy smile.

Vianne felt like she was _blending_ into the _wall_ , becoming _one_ with the oak shelves. She felt invisible to their eyes. _Well, she wasn’t a man they could flirt with, that was why._

She may aswell have been an _end table_ for all the conversational _use_ she posed to them. That was about as useful as she was to their, _interests_.

“ _Ladies_.” Thomas bowed his head politely. Refocusing on his book. Before they tried to wheedle and flatter him into accompanying them to play croquet on the lawn, or to take a turn, or a duet on the piano.

“ _And uh--Oh_ , Miss James. I almost didn’t _see you_ over there…” Clarice cooed in a sickly tone. Her teeth had suddenly _clenched_ , Vianne could tell.

“Clarice. Mary.” Vianne turned, nodding to them both, before turning back around. Thomas’s eyes shot to her again, capturing her glance, they seemed to say _; save me._

“We thought we’d come and avail ourselves of a good _book_ …” Clarice beamed, fluttering her lashes at Thomas, seating herself on the settee next to him.

 _“That’s usually why people come into a library…”_ Vianne speaks lowly to herself under her breath. Reaching up for a fat volume of Freud high above her.

“You two were in this room, _unchaperoned?_ ” Mary asked to Vianne, in a cruel mock, as she sat in the armchair on Thomas’s other side. _Now he was surrounded._

“ _I am_ engaged to be married, Miss Gamblin. _We can relax_ the rules of propriety a little…” Vianne speaks, not turning to her, as she leafed through a book on surgical advancements of the 20 th century.

Mary had a _sour_ look on her face that she shared with Clarice. One that spoke of their _obvious distaste_ for the woman.

Thomas took his eyes from Vianne’s back and turned to his two _eager_ companions. Though he wanted to wring their necks for speaking down to Vianne as if she were a _crushed bug_ on their shoe soles.

“There was nothing _improper_ about our being in the same room, _unattended_ , ladies.” Thomas speaks up. “Miss James and I, are _well_ acquainted. Besides which, she is _engaged_ , and, I must confess, I am something of a _taken man_ , also. We both wished for the solace of a _good_ read, there can be no harm in that _Now, surely?._ ” He explains. Vianne bit her lip to conceal her smile.

_Why did he have to be so damn kissable in moments when it was impossible?_

It would have not been hard to see the looks of part  _intrigue_ and part despair that crossed both the girls faces in that second.

 _“Oh_ , I’d no idea you were taken.” Mary exclaimed sadly. “What a _shame_ for us all.” She flirts.

 _“Indeed_. I am _most crestfallen_. Sir Sharpe.” Clarice sighs, laying a hand over her heart. Or more accurately, over the space where _she should’ve had one_.

“There has been not one _utterance_ in society about your being intended for _another_ …” She speaks sadly. _Offended almost, as if he hadn’t informed her of this news, and hand delivered her it, personally._

“I _have been_ careful about keeping my life safe from _such infamous_ utterances.” He smiles his most disarming, white, charming smile. Clarice shrilled into over-eager laughter. Her cheeks reddening.

“ _Oh_ , Sir Sharpe.” She giggled. “You have rapier like wit, Sir. I wonder I haven’t _discovered you_ sooner.” She preened.

 _Had I a rapier to hand, anywhere near you, I know what I’d wish to do with it._ Vianne ponders.

“Do tell us more about your beloved, Sir Sharpe?” Mary gabbled. Her voice eager and excited to know more. “Is she _a titled woman_? _Gentry?_ I imagine she is _a greatly esteemed_ lady.” Mary sighs.

“To me, _she is.”_ He tells them.

They both sigh romantically. Vianne half looked over her shoulder, and his eyes flickered _briefly_ to her as Clarice and Mary shared a look with one another about _how romantic_ he was.

“And, as a matter of fact, _she is titled._ She is  the daughter of a Marquis. But the title was sold, along with her estate, to _an odious cousin_ when her parents died.”

“How beautifully _tragic.”_ Clarice dreamt, leaning close enough to him to curl her palm onto his bare forearm, as his sleeves were rolled.

Vianne wanted _to scoff._ She wanted to exclaim that it hadn’t felt very _‘beautifully tragic’_ to be orphaned at ten, and raised by little more than _strangers_ and _teachers_.

The coldness of her life after the warmth of her childhood was the most cruel life to lead, and what _was worse_ , she couldn’t change it. She had _no voice. No money. No hope._ When she was all alone in a boarding school, crying herself to sleep, in a cold drafty dorm, she had thought back to her sunny, merry summers at Roseland, filled with love, and laughter and adventure, and now, how _bitterly_ she felt. She felt like a different girl.

“Like something _out of Jane Eyre.”_ Mary agreed with an captivated glimmer of romance in her eyes.

“Is she _beautiful?”_ Clarice dug, wanting to _know everything._

Vianne went so still focusing on his words, she _could feel her_ heartbeat like a tremor throughout her body.

Thomas smiled. His eyes _so_ warm and full of _love_. He snapped his book shut.

In that second, he had to focus _so hard_ not to look over to Vianne as he so wished too. _That would give the game away_.

“In _every way_.” He tells them. They both looked enraptured.

“ _Inside and out_ , she is _truly the most_ beautiful woman I’ve _ever_ encountered. She is kind. Passionate. Caring, and _my god_ , sometimes, _so stubborn_ , it’s.. astounding” He explains. Vianne bites back a laugh.

“Do we _know her?”_ Mary asked. “Surely a woman of _such beauty_ , _and_ high standing surely, she _must_ be known _to us_ in society?” She adds.

“Actually, though she takes _every care_ to be upstanding and honourable, _she doesn’t_ favour society’s clutches _overmuch…”_   He tells.

“I must confess, I rather _feel the same_.” He relents. This was obviously _fresh news_ to Clarice and Mary, women whose _every_ measure was _to please_ and be _respected_ in society, or else they’d simply _fall off_ the face of this earth.

“Have you proposed to her yet? Surely you’ll be engaged, or are you _already engaged_ _in secret?”_ Clarice asked, gasping in excitement. Clutching hard onto his hand.

“ _Oh_ , please say you are, that would be _so, terribly_ , romantic.” Mary exhales.

“I cannot.” He tells them. “She is, _at present_ , promised to _another man.”_  He voices.

Mary and Clarice both took such an intake of breath, Vianne wonders how they didn’t _suck in,_ and _ingest_ the entirety of the _whole room._

“How _deliciously_ scandalous…”  Clarice flirts, looking terribly ravenous.

“There is _nothing like a_ good love scandal.” Mary agrees with her companion.

“Will you _duel him_ for her hand?” Clarice gabbles away ecstatically.

“I _already have_.” Thomas tells.

Vianne _dropped her book_.

It clattered to the floor with a noisy thud. The pain of it landing on her toe hurt, though she was _too in shock_ to feel it.

She steps back and apologises to the room for her clumsiness. She felt in a _daze_ , she crouched, Thomas watched with glee, as her skirt bunched up about her delightful _plump_ , rear when she sank to her knees.

Her eyes met his, and he _crooks_ a sidewards smile at her, she stands once more. Feeling dizzy and weak, her heart pounded in panic and she also felt the edging of giddiness gnaw at her stomach.

_Had Thomas forced Henry to break with her? Heaven and earth, was she a free woman? Was she free to love him?_

“You duelled with _he_ …” She stopped herself short. “… _This man_ , Sir Sharpe?” Vianne speaks up. Her voice wobbled.

“I thought you had your nose _stuck_ in a _book_ , Miss James?” Mary sneered.

 _“Glued to its page more like.”_ Clarice snarled lowly under her breath. With a sweet poisonous smile on her lips to soften the blow.

“Forgive me. I was… _captivated_ by Sir Sharpes tale. Who _can resist_ such a rich love story?” Vianne spoke up. Stood by the end of the settee where Clarice and Thomas sat. She turned her head back to him.

“What _happened_.. with _this man,_ if that’s not too _rude_ a question…” She asks. Her hands folded across the book. She tried to look genial and blasé. But Thomas could see her knuckles were white where she clutched the book in her hands.

Thomas let his smile grow. Slowly. Torturing her. _She fought to remain standing_. He leaned closer, balancing his elbows on his knees as he sat, staring intently at her.

“I told the man, in _no uncertain_ terms, that he had _better_ relinquish the _love of my life,_ to me. _Or else.”_  He grins in looking up at Vianne. His warning clear in his face. _Cross him, and he could be a dangerous enemy to face._

Her breath stopped. She was certain her heart had long since failed, _and had done_ when he _first uttered the words._

“And what did _he say?”_ She asked with baited breath.

 _Then, when she was trying so hard not to kiss him_ , _he had to go and say the most marvellous thing…_

“He agreed to let _her go_.” Thomas tells her softly.

Her heart melted away into a puddle of mush. Her and Henry were broken. She wanted to march to the brute right then and _shove_ her engagement ring into his hands and wish _him good riddance_ for the rest of his life, and _sincerely bestow the best of luck_ to whatever _poor rich woman_ he shackled into marriage _. Because it wasn’t to be her anymore_.

She realised she hadn’t said anything for _a long_ moment. She hid her true feelings deep down and summoned her courage once more. She wet her lips and spoke.

“She must be _a very lucky woman_. To have a beloved _as devoted_ as you.” She congratulates him.

“I _don’t know_ about that… you’d have to seek _her judgement upon it_. To me, she was not a woman who needed _saving._ She wasn’t the damsel waiting for the right Knight. She was the damsel looking for the _right sword.”_  He offers poetically.

 _“Oh,_ she is _the luckiest_ lady to ever walk _earth_ to have you as her _beau._ ” Clarice beams at him, flirtingly stroking up his arm, feeling his triceps.

“She must be Tyche. _The_ _goddess of luck,_ to have won you.” Mary simpers with a sickly smile.

“I’m flattered you both believe so.” Thomas smiles to the harpies. He looks back to see Vianne with her back to them once more, selecting more books from the shelf _. She had too_. _It was a necessity_. If she let go, she’d _rush straight_ to him and kiss his _lips raw_. In truth, he doesn’t know what’s keeping him rooted to his chair, and not over there driving her wild with passion. _No._ He thinks. _No. That can wait for tonight. When I can love my unaffianced woman._

“I’ve never heard of a man _more in love_ with his lady.” Mary conveys, fluttering her lashes across at him.

“Now I know she _is free_ from him. I cannot fathom what is stopping me _tearing_ to _her side.”_  He admits.

“When shall you _go to her?”_ Clarice asks. “Take her in your arms and tell her _she’s yours_ , and _you, hers…”_  She dreamt.

“If a man ever _says that to me_ , there _must be_ Roses. Candles, string music, and starlight, so that he may _finally kiss me_ and we shall have the _perfect marriage.”_  Mary imagined. _It sounded like the conclusion to a soppy penny novelette._ Vianne cruelly wanted to burst her naive bubble and tell her no marriage union was perfect. Often men wanted a sensible, ignorable wife who would raise the children with little fuss. There was no passion in that, it was tradition. _A requirement. A duty._ And that was the most loveless thing of all.

She wanted to spin around and say that marriage is the most imperfect thing. But, then she remembers she had girlish dreams once. She’d had fantasies of her prince, climbing the ivory tower to rescue her. But the dashing stranger she fell in love with was twice as _alluring_ , _troubled_ and _mesmerising_ , _more so than any prince. The enigmatic, dark, charming rogue her heart had sold itself too from the first look. The first kiss to her hand and she was lost._

“I shall go to her, _as soon_ as I am _able_.” Thomas tells them all.

“How _utterly romantic.”_  Clarice shrilled.

“I would _simply die of happiness_ were I her.” Mary flirts.

“Well, ladies, thankyou for taking such an _active interest_ in my love life.” He spoke, standing up and going to replace his book on the end table. “ I believe I shall now take a solitary turn in the gardens to clear my head. I thank you _, all_ , for your _delightful company_ this afternoon.” He smiles genially.

Vianne watched him move to the door, opening it, he turned back and his eyes were hot blue coals which smouldered at her. Cutting across the room, spiking heat to prickle in her skin. It was an intimate look, one that said; _You will be mine, later_.

_And she couldn’t wait._

~

 


	33. (HEAVY SMUT!) Briarwell VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Reignite - Knox Brown
> 
> Annnnd now an eighth one. dear god, someone please stop me. (But don't) On an unrelated note I wrote this listening purely to Britney Spears and drinking red wine. Don't mind saying that I am Slightly drunk and flustered now. Oh, and um, this naughty, dirty, little chapter contains...well. I won't spoil it, I guess you'll just have to read it, now...won't you?

 

~

 

He watched her from the corner of his eyes _unknowingly_ , after dinner ended. He was sat at the gaming table, clouded by cheroot smoke and surrounded by gentleman chortling laughter and swirling brandy, or sipping whiskey. He’d been distracted from his potential run of luck with cards, when from across the large parlour, where she was sat talking to Westcot once more, he heard her _laugh_. That _wonderful, affirming_ sound that made heat _slide_ along his spine like a caress from the _finest lover._

Running his index and pointer finger across his lips as he sat, and grew lost in thought, admiring her the way one would a Grecian statue of a _goddess_. She _must’ve_ been aware his eyes were on her. And _she was, most keenly._ The flush that had settled on her pink cheeks, she could feel creeping _down_ her neck, to her décolletage. Staining the milky skin a rosy pink. Seeing the sight of her all flushed brought to his mind a _sinful want, a need,_ to see her in all her bare beauty, to find out _how else_ he could go about causing her cheeks _to pinken_.

He _never knew_ he could be so besotted with _one_ sight, but sat there, watching her smile, sipping her glass of red wine, warmly conversing with her acquaintance. He _knew_ he wanted this sight of her beaming, merry, _happy,_ to be a _permanent fixture_ in his life.

He watched as she stood her empty wine glass down on the side table, and then she stood, letting her sapphire blue dress fall to the floor in its full length, unfurling. His eyes roam up the stretch her body, past the dress that highlighted her hips, and drew the eye up the hollow curves that formed her waist. The cut of the neckline was just enough to be _daring_. It skimmed her shoulders, giving a _perfect_ semicircle to capture in faultless clarity her elegant shoulders and collarbone. _So pale_ and _lovely_ in the candlelight. Westcot stood and reached for her ivory gloved hand. And gently plucked it to his lips, perching a kiss on the back of her hand in parting. He was _too far_ away, and the din of the room is _too raucous_ to overhear, but any words that caused her affable smile must have been in friendship.

She bids him a gentle nod in graceful politesse, and he watches _his_ earrings jitter with her movement. She picks up her skirts and cuts across the parlour, heading for the door. Henry had long since left the room with a bottle of scotch to hand. She didn’t expect to _hear_ anything else from him. That was one of _his usual moods_ , to take to his solitude and _drown in drink_. _That was his beloved hobby_. She interjects a polite smile in the direction of the card table, and when she meets his eyes, it seems to send _a spark_ _crackling_ through the air. He smiles lightly back, his fingers still on his lips. And in her eyes, sat a _very loving_ glimmer that spoke of the hope _of so much more to come._

_Judging by the way his entire midsection tensed from her one look, he knew he wouldn’t disappoint._

She turns away and his eyes snatch every last bit of her. The nape of her neck, the movement of her shoulder blades under her skin. She passes out into the shadows of the hall, darkening her figure, and he watches after her _even after_ she fades from view. A sharp call of his name brings him down from admiring after an empty hallway, and he spends his turn.

Thomas retired to his room later than usual. After another couple drams of whiskey, and a lucky win from a good hand at blackjack. _Truthfully,_ he’d have followed her out the _second_ she left the room, but they were playing this affair _elusively,_ and that would have been _blindingly obvious_ to even the most _foolish_ person at Briarwell.

His room was clearly intended for a male bachelor. The décor was dark, and the colours used to bedeck it are _undoubtedly_ masculine. In the middle of the room, the bed stood as _a monument_ , it was so big. Four posters, with dark mahogany, carved in intricate detail. Enclosed with hangings of richly embroidered velvet, trimmed with golden tassels, that hung heavy and dark, and served well to block out light, and keep in heat. _It served as a brilliant little den in which to hide away from the world,_ he thought. It must be a _haven_ of a bed in winter, with the fireplace opposite the foot of the bed, _roaring_ , and the drapes pulled too, he could imagine the inhabitant would _never want to leave_. Sink into the soft mattress and the downy cushions and forget the world. _All the better if there was a naked bed mate in there, to help while away the time._

He snuffs out the candles, yanks off his boots, and swallow tailed dinner jacket, and begins to ready himself. He splashes water across his face in the en suite. Walking back into his room, padding along the thick rugs, barefoot, he loops his braces down by his hips, and un-fixes his tie, French cuffs, and takes out his collar, and studs. And shrugs off his piqué waistcoat. Finally he heaves off his dress shirt, and leaves only his heavy dress trousers lingering high up, on his hips. He rubs his neck where his collar pinched, and leaves his pile of agonizing civility draped over the armchair, by the book case, near the door.

He rubs his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose _so hard_ , he sees stars burst across the inside of his eyelids. His blood felt hot and lazy. Sluggishly thudding around his body from equal parts tiredness, and equal parts insobriety from the whiskey he’d taken. It was _very good_ , as an aristocrats whiskey _always was_ , but he should have declined the second glass.

He sinks onto the edge of his bed. A maid had turned the bed down, and he thudded down onto it, being swallowed up by the drapes and the _enormity_ of it, as he lay there, counting the seconds ticking by til midnight.

_That was when he’d go to her._

He folded his hands on his chest and sighed. When he closed his eyes and let his breathing wrack his whole body and his mind empty of all thought. One mantra ran through his head.

_Vianne is mine, Vianne is mine. Vianne is mine._

He opened his eyes.

 _Ye gods_. He was clearly _bewitched_.

His head was spinning with thoughts and memories of her like an out of control spinning top. _Tomorrow_ , his mind joked, _he’d burn twists of sage through Briarwell. For he was clearly hexed. Charmed._

Though he wasn’t complaining; in their two years apart he had done _little else_ but amass his fortune, and _wonder how_ to win her back. Whether she’d want him back, or would she exclaim _with horror_ that she _never wished to set eyes on him again_ , and _that was that._  He wouldn’t blame her if she did _spit_ those words at him. In truth, his past self was a man that _deserved them, and more._ He was plagued for _two years_ with such incertitude, that when he found her again, that night, at the ball, he was terribly ashamed to say he let vitriol and dark lust overtake him.

 _He’d scared her_. And he _hated_ himself for it. The only solace he took from his shameful behaviour, was that he swore he felt her _kiss him back,_ and clutch _as hard_ onto him _, as he did her._ And when he saw how Henry, truly, treated her…. When that façade beyond his handsome smile broke….His mind went blank of everything but _rage._

Soul shaking, gut knowing, blind, white hot, _frothing-at-the-mouth-sort-of rage._

He knew, from the instant he saw her silent, saddened, and cowering in Henry’s company, that he _wouldn’t rest_ until he’d assisted in throwing that cad _out of her life_ for good. _She’d suffered enough_ , he would _not let_ that man heap more _pain_ and _misery_ on her _already weary, heavy soul._

He was astonished to find that he felt, _nervous,_ about tonight. His stomach fidgeted with butterflies, and the base of his spine tingled, at the notion of doing something he hadn’t _indulged in_ since Vianne left him. He wet his lips and took a deep calming breath. In through the nose, and out through the mouth.

He mumbles to himself that he needs to be calm. _Floundering in unease was not a handsome prospect._

When he heard his door latch click back into place, he scrambled to sit _bolt upright_ , and his eyes _darted_ to the door. His hands pressed to the bed by his hips. He almost pounced out of his skin wondering who it could be. _Dear god, if it was one of the innumerable vain debs who hounded him with flirty smiles all day, he’d_ -

“It’s _only me..”_ Came a soft coo from the other side of the room. His body dropped instantly into relaxation. He couldn’t see her from where he sat, the drapes eclipsed his view somewhat. He could see she held a glowing taper of a candle, judging by the glow he could see sliding up the wall in his darkened room. He squints for the mantelpiece where the clock sat, to see it read ten to twelve, _earlier_ than their agreed meeting time.

“Vianne.” He stated. _She loved how her name tripped from his lips like she was a sacred element._

He let out a shaky breath, that was half bred with a smile. “I thought _I was_ coming to _you?”_  He asks, or states. She can’t be sure.

There is a small puff as she extinguishes the candle. She places it on the side. Now there is _only_ moonlight, and firelight in his room. _Just how she wanted it_ _to be_.

He’s  _so aware_ of her _, it’s mad_. She’d bathed _, he could tell._ He could scent a strong aroma of fresh soap and warm perfume _drift across_ to him, permeating the gaps in the beds tapestries. _That meant her hair would be soft and scented of soap._ Making him want to run his fingers through it _all the more._

“Can a lady not come to the man _she loves?”_ She asked. Her answer makes his heart flip over backwards.

 _“Of course_ she can. But that lady _better hurry_ up over _here_ and _kiss_ me, _sharpish_ , before I get cross…” He flirts teasingly. Staring across, though she still _evaded_ his view.

He hears her feet pad the floorboards, and onto the rug. And when she did come into view, stepping gingerly past the hanging, into his eyeline, _every part_ of him went _hard_ , like a coiled spring. _Ready to strike._

 _Jesu Maria_. _She was only in a dressing gown_ …

And judging by the way he had an unimpeded view of her décolletage, she wasn’t wearing a nightgown either _. Save for the swathe of the gown, she was naked_. He gulped.

He _wasn’t able_ to tear his eyes away from that place slice of skin she offered to his view. Her hair was loose, and its usual disorganised tumble of Rosetti red curls and tresses that fell down her back in cresting kinks.

“Is my meaning for coming to you, _clearer now?”_   She asks with a satisfied little smile.

 _“Hard_ to tell…” He relents. His blood shooting up by _ten degrees_. Finally he managed the simple task of peeling his eyes away to meet her own.

“The gown _does_ leave room for _ambiguity…”_ He teases, jokingly.

He wanted to go and grab her, _taste_ her kiss, _feel_ her embrace, but for now, he was stuck on the seductive nature of the _sight_ of her.

She smiles, and her hand goes to the ties, he watches her hands undo the bow, and after she shrugs it from her shoulders, she gently opens _one side,_ and then _the other_ , and then, she lets the gown _crumple_ on the floor at her feet.

 _Sweet Christ_ , is all the intelligible language his brain is _capable_ of producing.

 _Especially_ when his gorgeous love is stood in front of him, in his room, _utterly naked._

“How about _now?_ ” She asks him with a widening smile.

He was lost on _seeing her. Her smile_. _Her body_. His gaze slid down her throat that he wished to _pepper with kisses_ , and _grazes_ of his sharp, hungry teeth. From there, he admired the full orbs of her breasts, hanging heavy with her nipples hardened to rosy pink points with her lust. _His mouth salivated_. Then it was her waist, that flaring slope of her hips. Those thighs. Handfuls of _irresistible femininity_ he’d _gripped with ardour_ in the dark, last night. Then, of course, _he was a man after all,_ his gaze dropped further down to the most _logical destination_ … to that triangular thatch of curls that _guarded above her sex._

 _Guarded those sweet, secret_ places he knew intimately, _by heart_ , with his lips and tongue. He wet his lips. _Sweet god_ , _He could taste her already, from here._ And he was harder than a _barge pole_ , to boot _. His lust_ strained powerfully, _almost painfully_ , against the barrier of his thick dress trousers.

“I feel I should give you _fair warning_ , _Vianne.”_ He speaks, not entirely surprised to find his voice was hoarse. His eyes fixed on her.

“I haven’t- _done this_ , in a _very long tim_ e, and right at this very second when you are offering up _your naked self_  to me like this, I must confess there are _such dark, depraved desires_ running through my head, that I fear I _may frighten you_..” He warns.

She bites her lip, and she feels her sex _, clench_ , with wanting. Her thighs trembled with longing, and she _knew_ he caught sight of that.

“Nothing you can _say_ , or _do_ , will deter me, Thomas.” She promises him, stepping closer. _A wave_ of her fragrance came with her nearness, and Thomas fought off a groan. _Not very well._ A hoarse strangled mumble tore from his throat in guttural force.

“I _won’t_ be gentle.” He says _lustfully, darkly_ , watching her hips for a second. She was within _grasping distance_ now. His eyes were dark and he almost _seemed angry_. The look in his clouding eyes was pure _hunger_ , she realises. She recognised it as the same one in her, because she had gone, _without this kind of intimacy_ , for _two years too_.

“Then _don’t be_.” She tells him simply, she reached her right hand over and cups his left cheek in her palm. Her thumb strokes his scar and he shuts his eyes, exhaling a shaking shudder of a breath. Her touch sent shivers coursing through him.

 _“Don’t say_ I _gave you no warning_ …” He growls.

There was _no civility, no_ _hint_ of a _gentleman, left in him now_. Brute force and the full weight of his lust would be _the only_ existing things _in him now. She’d made her bed, coming to him like this, and now she’d lie in it._

_And he would gladly take her 87 different ways on it before the night was through._

They both gasped when his arm shot out and pulled her onto his lap, cupping her hips, and squeezing her rear, he lifted his hips and _ground_ them into hers, pressing their _aching_ bodies together, his lips found hers in a _carnal kiss_ , and it is merely seconds until she feels his teeth _graze_ her lip, and his _hungry_ tongue plunges into her mouth, stealing her breath, making her whimper in _plain desire_.

His hand kneaded into the flesh of her bottom, his free one was a tight grip in her hair that stung, but somehow _thrilled_ her. _His unyielding grip made her nipples ache with longing as they brushed his chest._

Emboldened by the knowledge she was bringing forth his animalistic passion, she reached between them, her hand gripping over the rigid length of him through his trousers. His teeth bared down, _hard,_ on her lower lip in surprise.

He breaks away to growl in pleasure. _Mouthing_ against her neck, his teeth scraping her skin, It would bruise, but she _didn’t care_.

 _The sting of his teeth spurred her on_. _He knew_ her neck was her _weak point._

His face is an intense expression _of amazement_ and _desire_. His eyes shut, brows drawn, mouth open. _Moaning._

_Lords, was there anything more alluring and erotic than a grown, strong, tall, man reduced to nothing but moaning?_

She _plunges_ her hand deeper, past his waistline, through his drawers, until she felt _all of him_ in her hand. The soft, velvet of his skin, taut with steely hardness. She circles her hand into a fist and slowly strokes him, flicking her wrist upwards. She lets her fingertips feel over _every_ ridge, _every_ vein. _He almost sobs in wanting._

When she repeats the motion, his hips buck, and he cannot stop the mumbles that fell from his lips. _“Fuck_..” He curses when she grips tight, and runs her hand across the _heavy_ crown of him. He is too in lust to register her moving out of his arms, and settling to her knees, on the floor by the edge of the bed.

His eyes _snap open_ when he heard the soft rustle of fabric, and recognised that as the sound of his trouser falls being opened.

_Dear god, this woman would kill him._

He puts one hand behind him, holding him in his sitting position, his other arm floundered. Then, she wrenched open his trousers, and spread them flat to his thighs, he bites his lip so hard, he fears he broke _skin_ , when he feels her mouth lower to his cock _. His erection all but sprang into her keen chasm._

_It might have been his sex-starved imagination, but, he swore he could hear Handel’s hallelujah chorus in his head._

“ _Christ,_ Vianne…” He whispers, almost in disbelief. Without meaning too, his free hand _twines_ in her hair, and _grips_. Lifting some of it off the back of her neck, holding it off her face so he could _better see her_ in her actions. Better see those _luscious_ pink lips, _that sweet mouth, smile,_ as she _kissed, licked,_ and _moved_ her mouth all the way up and down his length.

_Oh, she was in for it when she removed her mouth from him. He’d promised rough, and after this, she was in for one hell of a ride._

She loved the taste of him. _So male, so…heavy. Hard. Impatient._ The musk and salt of him in her mouth made her salivate and want to _please him more_.

She loved the silky softness of him. She loved how he filled her mouth, and when her hand wrapped around the base of him – _only just-_ his breath comes in ragged spurts and his hips _thrust_ up into her mouth, making his length plunge deeper, hitting the back of her throat, _which makes him moan more._

He threw his head back, and she _devoured_ the sight of it. If she weren’t doing this, she would have _nipped_ _up_ his throat with _her teeth._

 _Ladies weren’t supposed to enjoy this chore._ They were supposed to get on their knees, please their husbands and _not complain_. Vianne got on her knees, and _she was_ _infatuated_ with the end result.

She loved _the power_ this position gave her. He was _helpless, exposed_ to her. _Vulnerable_ to her touch. _He was at her mercy, just as she was last night._ Triumph sang in her body with glee with every _gasp, groan_ and _shiver_ she pulled from him. More so when she _rakes_ the short of her nails down his lower abdomen, feeling every hard slab of muscle, _tense._

She pulled up and off him, _only_ taking the head of him in her mouth, her tongue teasingly _tracing_ the tip. She glances up to see he was looking down at her _fascinated,_ with dark eyes, and flushed cheeks, his mouth had fallen open and his breathing _was ragged_.

For the man _who always_ seemed to be composed, who _was always buoyant_ and _always_ had the _last smile_. _She would be lying_ if she said she _wasn’t enjoying_ teasing him to the brink of _loosing all control._

She sinks her head down once more, and she watches him groan again, his hand skimming a gentle pattern across the back of her neck. He _gasps_ for breath again, and then she hears the _huskiest_ whisper come as a _plea_ from his lips.

 _“Oh, god_ Vianne. As much as I _adore_ … _uh.This.”_  He trails off as she licks _all the way_ from the base of him, to the tip.

“… _I’d rather not_ spend in your… _god,_ _perfect_ mouth.” He manages to moan out. She hollows her cheeks and brings her mouth up and off him.

She sits back on her heels. Her hands resting on his kneecaps. His hand releases from her hair, and he strokes the back of her head, coming round to press his two fingers under her chin. Tilting her head up, _he smirks_ , _that devilish, filthy smirk_ , he moves to stand, urging her backwards, she stands and takes a step back.

He stands, _admittedly to her credit, on shaky knees_ , and divests himself of his thick breeches. Shucking them down his legs, so they joined her gown on the floor. _Forgotten._

When he is as naked as she is, he comes to his full height, _towering_ over her. There was lust _more than evident_ in his eyes. She admires him for a moment, standing imposing, _erect_ , and covered in moonlight.

He looked like he should have been a sketch for one of Raphael’s proposed sculptures. _Such rampant beauty_. _Everything_ about him was.. _flawless_ in moonlight. His _skin,_ his _eyes,_ His _smile_. Those trimmed _onyx tresses_. Naturally, her eyes dipped _a little lower_ , to places more _private_. There was no mistaking he’d been _well endowed_. _She’d never stood a chance to not fall for him. He was pleasing to look at, and more than passionate_ _in the boudoir_. She wet her lips, admiring the strong, pale, twin columns of his thighs.

He walked around her, his left hand skimming over her belly, the back of his knuckles drew patterns across her. She gasped at the _unexpected touch_ of his hand, he was out of view now, stood behind her. She could feel the heat of his _skin burning_ onto hers. _Radiating his heat_ outwards.

“ _My turn_.” He smiles darkly.

She goes to turn and look at him, over her shoulder. But he steps away and reached for his pile of clothes, she twists further, but _jumps_ skittishly when something silky and soft is linked in front of her eyes.

She wets her lips, smiles and goes to touch the makeshift blindfold, as he  _tied it_ in place at the back of her head. The knot is stiff and she can _see nothing_. But she recognised the _scent_ on the fabric. It was _his_ shaving soap _and_ cologne.

 _He’d blinded her with his neck tie_.

 _Oh_ , he was making good on his _rough_ promise. He had warned her their joining would be.

His mouth lowers to her ear, and he lets a slow exhale of hot breath tantalise her skin. He watches Goosebumps raise on her pale flesh. _He smirks so_ to that.

“Have you ever read the _Kama Sutra_ , Vianne?” He asks in a low whisper.

His breath hitting her neck make her thighs _squeeze together_ to alleviate her tension. Of course, it _didn’t_ help. _The only thing that would was his touch._

_She had an uncanny feeling he would wring out every ounce of energy and pleasure from her tonight._

_“I have not.”_ She answers on a shaky breath. _Gasping_ again in shock when she felt his fingers trail along the outside of her thigh, _both sides._ From there, stroking gently across the underside of her wrist.

“I have, and _if you’ll allow_ me, I’ll _acquaint you_ with it’s contents…” He smiles, he grabbed another tie. His bow tie this time. It _should just_ be about long enough. He slithers it through his fingers and lets her _hear_ it.

He finds her wrists and takes them both in one hand. _He binds her hands too_. Leaving them clasped to rest against her thigh.

 _“Oh?”_ She asks, both a little nervous and excited. She could _feel her own lust_ starting to _drip_ down her thighs. Her nipples felt _so hard_ , it was almost _a pain_. She wanted his _hot hands_ to enclose around her breasts to _ease_ her aching nubs. _Or better yet, his hot mouth._

“It is an _ancient_ Hindu text. Believed to be written around 400 BCE. It was written in Sanskrit as _a guide_ to virtuous and gracious living, according to the four Hindu desires of life. “ He tells.

“One of these desires, being… _sexual desires_ …” He explains. She swallows, remaining silent. _She did love hearing him explain things in that gorgeous, but soft, gravelly, husky voice._

“As I said, there are _four main_ virtues of Hinduism. The first is _Karma,_ meaning, ‘ _Desire_.’ And Artha, which is _‘Prosperity_.’” He clarifies. “Then Dharma, or ‘ _Virtuous Living’_ and lastly, Moksha, which means _‘Liberation’”_   He chuckles. Tying the knot about her bound hands tight.

“Which _is odd_ seeings as I now have you _all tied up_ for me.” He chuckles. “I must be a _very poor practice_..” He groans into her ear. She bites her lip. His long fingers curl about her hips. 

 “Now, whilst _some_ people may believe that the book _is purely about sex_ …” He continues. His hands reached down and teased a feather light touch to her nipples, making her _whine_ aloud for more.

“It is _actually_ about the _philosophy of love_ …” He tells her, not finished yet, smoothing his hands from her waist, to her hips. She moves her hands up, out of his way.

“…And what can trigger _desire._.” He croons, kissing her neck and running one hand over that beautiful cleft of hers, she _fought valiantly_ to remain _upright_.

“… and _how_ desire is _sustained_.. ” His fingers _slide lower_ and touch, _ever so gently_ , to her dripping core. He smirks against her skin when she cries out an unintelligible _cry of longing._ He bites his lip at feeling how wet she is.

“And whether or not it _is good_ …” He rubs across the hood of her clit and she groans. As soon as his touch is there, and realised, he _draws back_. _Good, good, so good,_ She agrees in her head.

“Or _bad.”_ He finishes. Biting her neck. He sinks his teeth in _deep enough_ to leave a _bruise_. Sliding around her hips, and cupping her delightful rear in both his hands, and squeezing. Her ragged breath lets him know he’s doing _something right_. _Driving her wild. Wanton for his touch._

“In this _very instructional_ book. There are _, ten, whole_ , chapters purely on _sex_.” He enlightens to her. _By now_ , she was _so aroused_ , she was positive she’d _be begging_ him soon. “It describes _64 types_ of _sexual acts.”_

“These chapters _rather took_ my interest, as you _can well imagine_. They were all, illustrated _rather vividly.”_  He flirts as he closes his hands around her breasts, feeling her hard nipples graze like _spear points_ against his palms. The sound she made was an _almost inhuman_ sound of desire. He chuckles against her ear.

“All I could imagine when I read them was _you, and me_ , in place of the man and woman drawn on the page. You’ve _no idea how many_ nights I woke up, _hard_ , and _gasping_ _your name._ Some nights Vianne, I _couldn’t_ get back to sleep unless I stroked my cock, like a randy youth, until I _spent_ to the thought of _you, always you_. You, _naked_ in my bed, pleasuring me with your _sweet mouth_.” _She felt_ his fingertips brush across her smile.

“Or I think of you and me _posed_ like those figures in the book. _Sweating_ together, _writhing_ together, _cumming, together.”_ He growls.

His aching cock pressed pleadingly into her ass, begging to be reunited with her slick folds. _But not yet. He was nowhere near done with her yet._

“I shall have to try and get _you a copy_ of this book to peruse. You’d find it _most…awakening…”_   He smiles.

“Not as awakening _as you_.” She manages to get out. He smirks and grants her _a small kiss_ on the neck as a _reward_.

“I read about the _stimulation_ of desire…” He tells her, rubbing her nipples harder. She couldn’t help but _arch_  her back into him, the soft of her rear pressing into his hard cock. Strained rigid and slick with his desire.

He let a _strangled moan_ come from the back of his throat, her head fell back on his shoulder, with one hand now on her hip, the other _cups_ the front of her throat. He doesn’t squeeze hard, to choke her, but he _does apply a gentle_ pressure.

“Types of embracing, kisses, _caresses…_ ” He purrs seductively, twirling a soft pattern across her hip. Down her thigh.

“Marking with _nails..”_ He smiles, letting his come back up over her hip, grazing her, then his mouth is on her shoulder.  “I _love it_ when you mark _my back_ with _yours_ …” He adds.

“Marking with _teeth_ , biting, and _even…_ ” His hand sinks to her ass. and he leaves a quick _harsh slap_ there on her bare cheek. _She shivers._

“Slapping.. only the _good_ kind.” He is _quick_ to assure her, rubbing his healing hand over the _stinging_ mark he just made.

“Then there are _numerous_ suggested sex positions.” He tells her, he puts his hands on her hips and slowly guides her to turn around, putting her front to face him. His mouth _waters_ to take _a taste of he_ r when he see’s the wetness _running down_ her thighs in the moons light. He starts to walk her backwards. Step by step, speaking all the while.

“ _My favourite_ chapter was one on _superior coition._ Which I will be to re-enacting with _you later_. In the meantime _I want_ to put chapter eight _into practice_ …” He commands.

She hits one of the bedposts. The carvings rubbing and pressing into her spine. He grabs her hands and puts them above her head, _forcing_ her wrists back to touch the wood. His touch says enough. _‘You keep them there.’_  He gently parts her thighs and she cannot help let a _small question_ bubble out from her lips.

“What _was chapter eight about_ Thomas?” She asks bravely. She waits a long moment for a response. _And none comes_. His touch goes to her thigh again, and all in an instant, her question is answered….

 _“This_ …” He confirms.

His _breath_ is what she feels first. Ghosting across her moist thighs. Then long fingers curl about her right thigh, and _hoist_ it to hook over his shoulder, and then she feels his lips. His _scorching hot_ mouth finds her sex and _devours her._

Her toes _curl_. Her mind goes completely numb, save for all the sensations he causes. Going from not being touched, to having his mouth on her is _so good, a tear_ drips from her eye.

 _It felt divine_. And when he _curls, two, long_ fingers inside her too, whilst his strong tongue flicks against her clit, _she swears she’d died and gone to heaven_.

He pushes his fingers _deeper_ , his tongue seeks out the raw nerve endings of her clit and _doubles_ his efforts to use his teeth and tongue on her too, _scraping_ the swollen bud with his lips and teeth makes her hips shove forwards onto his face, her neck and brow start to look dewy in the light.

Her hands _itch_ to tangle in his ink coloured hair. _She was going to perspire of bliss soon, she was certain of it._

The heel of his hand pressed against her cleft. She tried to remain still but it wasn’t an easy task. She wanted _to squirm, buck, fidget_ and _wrap_ _every part_ of herself _around him._ She couldn’t see due to the blindfold, but, _oh,_ he had his eyes _fixed on her._  He keenly watches her expression as he brings her to a climax.

He felt like _a king among men_ doing this to her. Bringing Vianne to orgasm was a _particular_ pleasure to him. Being her lover was _so much more_ than just pleasure. The intimacy, the closeness, at first it had been astounding to him. But then two years without it? It was an _agony_.

What he said was true. _He’d never been with anyone else._ _Not_ in their _years apart. Not_ whilst they _were married_. _Not even with Lucille whilst he was still married to her_. They had been drifting apart _long before_ Vianne had made her appearance in his life. She was the first to draw _love, and feelings_ into sex, for him. And he could _never_ get enough. After their wedding night, he was _aghast_ at how much he _wanted_ her. But he was afraid of overwhelming her, _so_ he kept _his distance._ He stayed away, even though _he hated_ to do so, because he didn’t wish to _overcome her_ with the frequency of his _carnal desire_ s.

_But, my god, when he did have her…_

It was unlike _anything_ he’d ever felt in his life. Feeling her, _his wife,_ _cum_ beneath his _hand,_ his _mouth_ , his _body_ – well, firstly it made him feel like an absolute _deity_. Second, it made him feel like _a human being_. Made him feel he had _a connection_ with her.

He’d been worried in coming to London, to win her back again, that he wouldn’t be wanted. That she’d protest at having his scarred face _to behold_. Or _, to have between her thighs._ He could remember thinking, what self-respecting, decent woman would _allow_ this _repulsive, scarred, face_ in her life?

Apparently _Vianne would._ And _not only that,_ but she would _hunger_ for him, _bed_ him, _love_ him and _care_ for him as if the piddling scar wasn’t even, _there,_ at all.

She arched her hips now, up into him, trying to draw him closer, he does this for her. Bringing his hand to the arc of her lower back, he _pulls_ her forwards, planting his face _directly between_ her thighs, nuzzling his face into _all of her_ , _still_ pleasuring her with his fingers too. The sweet taste of her only seemed to increase. He could _feel all_ her muscles _clench, hard, especially_ her thigh over his shoulder. Her hips busy chasing her own bliss, whilst _he revelled_ in her doing so. When he nudges his teeth across her clit once more, she _breaks_.

She wracks, sobs, shivers and cries, _loudly._ She tensed as her pleasure _took her,_ her hips stuttering to grasp _every last quake_ of it. The gorgeous wet heat of her sex, _sucked_ , at his fingers hungrily. He savoured each _lovely, gentle, sigh_.

She leant back against the post for support, as he draws his fingers from her, leaving her _clenching_ around nothing. When he pulls back, he finds the irresistable, silky, wet, taste of her release slicked _all over_ his hand and fingers. He tastes them, sucking up to his knuckles to savour her. _She did taste as good as heaven._

He comes to a stand, noting how his own desire was straining _so hard_ to be inside her, he comes to realise that it’s _the only thought_ in his head.

He takes her hips in his hands, skimming up to her waist, he presses his mouth to hers and she falls limp under him, her bound hands link over his shoulders, and her lips _acquiesce_ to _his loving invasion_. He removes her blindfold too. _She savours that he is as flushed and sweaty as she is_.

Snatching her opportunity, she curls one thigh about his hip, and _brushes_ her sopping groin, _against his_. Her slippery sex mingled with his hardness, and _he cannot fathom why_ he’s denied himself for _so long_ , _in one selfish groan._

One hand stretched behind his head and undoes the _loosened_ knot of his bowtie. _She must’ve squirmed_.

He lets it fall to the floor and slither away. She takes both her freed arms and crosses them at his shoulders, bringing them chest to chest, _skin to skin_. She had to reach on, _wobbly,_ tiptoes to kiss him. But it was worth it. The salt and taste of herself on his tongue was _oddly pleasing_ to find. They lose themselves in this kiss. It is just lips, tongues and sighs. And though he could merrily kiss her all the live long day, he had the matter of _mind blowing sex_ to get back too.

He suddenly jerked _free_ of her grip, from where his length, _so invitingly_ , nuzzled against her soft belly and hip, and _spun her_ around. His hands on hers, covering them, pressing them to the tall bed post. She feels his _groin press_ into her backside, and she feels _vulnerable_. _Pleasured. Aching for more. But_ vulnerable, _too._

His hands tease up her silken thighs, and grip her waist, he bends her forwards from there. She stays where he puts her.

“ _Hold_ the bed post.” He instructs. She nods, gripping it _tight._

He stands behind her, and _nudges_ her legs apart. She moves them, one by one, to where _he wanted_ them. She felt even more exposed, bending like this afore him. But, apparently, that was _his wish_.

 _She leaps_ forward, not expecting the touch to _her sex_ , from behind. She recognises it as his thumb, sweeping down her folds, _parting her_ , for his _viewing pleasure_. He slid from her cleft, all the way down her labia, and _back up_ again, to find the sensitive pearl of her clit. Her groin – somehow – did a backflip when he groaned, satisfactorily, at her position.

“ _I believe_ , this was the _pose_ mentioned on page 83..” He sarcs. She lets out a laugh of disbelief. One hand finds her hip, the other, only for a self-indulging moment, strokes his, _more than ready_ , erection.

“I hope I won’t _scandalise you too much_ , Vianne. But you’re going to feel, _all of me, like this_. and I fully intend you to _be sobbing my name_ when you _cum_.” He promises. That pledge sends a little spark to flicker through her nipples, and her clit.

He lifted her hips, guided himself to her, and slid to the hilt in _one smooth push_. Inch by blissful inch he fills her _so completely_. He wants to sink his teeth into her neck when he feels her hips arching back to meet his. Finally, he slides _fully to her_ , when the backs of her thighs press to his. _It was his turn to have the toe curling pleasure._

She felt _his_ forehead rest against her shoulder. _Slightly aglow_ with perspiration, she felt one of his hands move to cover hers, and his fingers slid in-between hers, he was panting like a feral beast. They were both rocked to their cores by the same feeling…

“ _What kind of lunatics were we to deny ourselves this for two years?”_ He asks her in one long whisper. Her only answer is a groan, when he begins _to move_.

“Do _you feel that_ , Vianne?” He asks her, thrusting _so deep, so wholly_ inside her that it _was all_ she could feel. It was so good. But it was an ache too. It was _both bliss_ and _pain_. To feel him smacking into her, deep, over and over. She cries an affirmative response of “ _Oh, god, yes.”_  Those seem to be _the only words_ she can remember. _She forgot, her Thomas could be a beast, if untamed._

“This is what _you do to me_. _You drive me wild_.  _Feral._ I can’t see you smile at me and _not think_ about kissing you. _Only now_ , I _know_ I’m going to think about _fucking you raw_ , instead.” He promises. He grips her loose hair, and tugs her neck back, he watches the _delicious arch_ of her back, and _thrusts harder_ into her. Hearing their bodies, and _skin smack_ into each other.

“Every time _you flirt_ with me, like downstairs _today_. I wanted to pin your skirts up, bend you over like this, and _teach you a lesson about teasing me_.” He tells her, leaning to cover her back, with his front, nipping playfully at her neck. She clutched the post _harder,_ her nails _sinking into the wood._ He could feel her plump ass, and her heavy breasts, _sway_ with each thrust.

“I know what it is _to crave_. To be _addicted_ to you, _like this_. To _be ruled_ by _my need_ for _you_. It’s _how_ _it was_ for me at Allerdale. I could _never get enough of you._ As soon as I left our bed, I was _counting the seconds_ to return to it, and you, and pleasure _you insensible with desire._ I kept away because I feared that I would scare you with _how I wanted you._ I wanted you in every, deep, dark, possessing way a man can want his wife. I wanted to _take you,_ _all_ over the house, in _each room. Twice._ I wanted to try _every goddamned position_ on earth to pleasure you… but I was cowardly, I _could never_ tell you there _was no respite from my love for you.”_  He groans. Pulling her tighter, to balance now on her toes. And though he is doing a good job of making _her thoughtless with lust,_ _she clutched_ , keenly, onto every word. _Every word and feelings he’d never told her about._

His words seemed somehow sad, and angry, and his rhythm is a punishing, brute force now. As was this; this position was animalistic, carnal and possibly very uncivilised, but when he seemed to be _knocking each breath_ out of her with _a punch_ , she submits to the shocking fact that this is _the most erotic thing_ they’ve _ever done._

They begin to pant together, like beasts, He slides forwards to nibble at her neck again. His thrusts now are so eager she can barely stand it. She was quivering and sighing, gasping with the need to release, it was _so, so close._ She could feel herself begin to tip off the edge.

“Oh, _Thomas. I’m..I’m..”_ She squirms in one long mumble.

“ _God, Vianne_ , me too.” He sighs quickly.

Just as it was for him too, one hand wrapped under her, and rubbed her clit in _quick_ , keen, circles, trying to coax out _the best_ of her climax. Which, after three pressing swirls of his fingers, _he did._

 _It was devastating. On both counts._ She couldn’t hide from hers, nor could she hold back, she cried out, _noisily,_ trying in vain to _smother her mouth_ on her bent forearm. Her pleasure caught her and she came in _wracking, unbelieving sobs_.  He did the same, he _moaned, growled, groaned_ and _roared_ as he came, his hips stuttering fast to plough himself into her. Easing out every last ounce of pleasure. When he stops, he slumps against her, wetting his lips. She could  still feel the steely length of his hard cock at the centre of her. _Pulsing_. As she clamped down, _hard_ , on him. _Robbing him of all he had to give._

_When Thomas Sharpe promised roughness, he delivered._

He gently pulled back, sliding from her, still hard, which amazed him. _Stars danced_ in his vision, and he feels so boneless, he _would happily_ collapse to the floor and sleep there. _After such a love making as that, he would sleep standing, if he had too._

He wraps his arms under Vianne, and brings her round, spinning her to face him, he could feel her thighs _tremble wildly_ in the aftershocks. He was surprised to find her skin chilled. He _eyes up_ the smouldering fire.

He summons his brain, _and remaining dregs_ of strength, grabs the feathery eiderdown off the bed. He grabs her hand, spins her about, and pulls her down, onto the huge, cushiony rug by the roaring fire, he braces himself behind her, tucking her peachy bottom into his folded legs, he presses his chest to her back, and envelopes them both in the snug cocoon of the eiderdown. He reaches over her to stoke the fire, before leaning back and wrapping his _criminally long arms_ around her. _Holding her tight_. And busies himself kissing her shoulders as they watch the flames dance. He soothes a particularly _sore,_ looking bite mark he made on her shoulder.

“Are we wasting a perfectly _good, big, bed?”_ She asks him, after a few long moments of silence, whilst their breathing evens out, and their bodies warm up once more.

 _“No_. Put it this way, we’re making _excellently, rare,_ use of an Aubusson rug.” He tells her, kissing near her ear. Snuggling against her warming skin. _She felt like silk in his arms._

“After that, _Thomas,_ I could sleep _on the roof_ for all I cared.” She smiles dreamily.

“You’re keeping _that gorgeous ass_ , _right here_ , Miss James…” He tells her forcefully. When he whispered his next sentence in her ear, _she smiles_ herself to sleep.

“That was only the _first course.”_   He tells, smirking, and then _marking a new_ love bite to her shoulder.

“How many more courses should I expect?” She asks. His teeth scrape her earlobe. And she whimpers.

“ _That_ , sweetheart. Depends on _my appetite.”_

_Oh, this man_.

 

~

 

 


	34. Ailments and Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Under The Shadows - Rae Morris
> 
> Back to present day Thomas & Vianne. I'm sorry. This story is a mess. flitting here and there, I'm so sorry for you poor buggers trying to keep up. But it does accurately represent my chaotic, disorganised, writers mind. I know I used the 'and then it was a dream' trope. And for that. I accept I am trash. But the way I see it, I treat it more as a form of PTSD for Thomas. thank god for Vianne. And this is part 1. More to come...

 

 

 

 ~

 

His mind went to darker places than he’d care to admit too, when he slept. Thoughts he couldn’t, and would never, disclose to Vianne swarmed in his head on well worn paths, dragging up vile memories he’d thought he’d buried. Rotten, warped, twisted dark things. His demons.

He was home. That much was clear. But it didn’t feel as such. It was unusually dark, sombre, shrouded in the black of night. He was stood on the landing. Just outside Julia and Arthurs room. But something nasty, and sinister was slithering its way up his spine. Causing his blood to prickle up under his skin like needles. The air was cold enough to make his teeth chatter.

He heard a voice, singing, from the other side of the door. It was a lullaby being softly crooned. He steps closer to the door, hearing the floorboards creak and crack under his feet. The door opens with a slow, moaning whine. When he got inside, his heart clawed up his throat, and choked him.

It was as if something cold and horrible slammed through his body. _Lucille_. She had that effect on him. And there she was, the nastiest spectre from his past. Stood in his children’s nursery, softly singing to Arthur, whom she clutched in her arms. Her frail white arms, wrapped around, under his son. She was stroking his hair, mumbling to him things he was too far away to hear. Tears were dripping down her gaunt face. Her ravens hair let loose, and she was swathed in a long, ghostly nightgown, the one that drifted behind her when she walked. She didn’t acknowledge his presence. But she spoke to him across the room. Her voice a soft, cooing whisper.

“We have him _, at last. Thomas_. _Our_ little prince.” She calmly intones. He felt his chest burn for breath, tears prickling at his eyes with all the subtlety of hunting spears. _Not again. Not here…._

 _Her nightgown was stained scarlet_. There were spatters of it too on her face. And on Arthurs, as she stroked his perfect little cheek. Leaving rusty smears in her wake.

_Blood. He could smell the awful copper of it hanging in the cold air like fog._

His heart slams up again in his chest when he looks about, to see no sign of Julia, asleep in her little cot. Where she belonged. Near her brother.

It took him several seconds to realise that tears were burning, stinging his eyes. And that he’d opened his mouth, but his voice hadn’t the courage to come forth.

“He’s _not yours_ to have.” He spits out, disgusted, his voice breaking. She didn’t even turn her eyes from Arthur, up to him. She was beguiled by him. _Nor_ would she ever put him down, or let him go. She would care for him like no other could. And he would _always_ be _hers_. _Well, now_. _History had a funny way of repeating itself, didn’t it?_

As if she didn’t hear him speak, she does so again. “Of course _he’s mine._ After all, he has no mother, _now.”_   She relays.

The tranquillity of her voice made his blood freeze. He watched her lithe hand stroke Arthurs inky hair back from his forehead. Besotted with his sleeping, angelic face. _One thought leaps to Thomas’ attention._

He tears from the room almost at once. His body moves him quicker than he can comprehend. And noises, pleas, gasps, wails, are coming from his mouth faster, louder, he didn’t even realise he was making them.

He opens his and Vianne’s bedroom door, and at the horror of the sight awaiting him, sprawled on the bed, he sinks to his knees and he wails. His legs couldn’t hold him any longer, and they shake and crumple beneath him, like he is a paper doll torched with a match. Parts of him wither away, and he can feel his broken heart, shattered, pouring agony through his chest.

Shaking, trembling, and crying the tears of a grieving widower, he stumbles forwards on his knees. And his shuddering hands go to clasp at Vianne, who lay on their bed, unmoving, eyes glassy and fixed, like a dolls. Her body prostrate across the bed, _so much_ blood dousing her body and the bed around her, he can’t tell _what_ was done to her. Nor to Julia. Who lays enclosed in Vianne’s other arm. She too. Horribly _silent_. Vianne's body is twisted, on her side, into Julia, trying valiantly to protect her.

He shakes her shoulder, he kisses her arm that dangled, still – _so still_ – off the side of the bed. _He begs her. He pleads with her to come back, to both his girls to come back_ , even though they were both past hearing him.

He is on his knees before Vianne, his arms cradling her lifeless form, he feels sick with the way her skin is cold, and her head lolls back limp, when he wraps his arms about her shoulders and weeps into her bloodied neck. He feels her hair, doused, tipped in wet blood, soak into his clothes, but he doesn’t care.

He whispers to her, he talks avidly, of his love for her, he implored her not to leave him here alone. He winds his fingers through hers, but they are stiff, and _unfeeling._ He just wants them back. _That’s all he knows._

A gust of cold, dead air shifting to waft behind him, signals that Lucille was looking over her handiwork, still clutching Arthur in her arms. _She’d ravaged their little family and took what she saw as hers, by right. His son._ She towers over him, her stare as cold, grey, and impervious as it always used to be in life.

“We had no need for them.” She tells him flatly. Thomas lip wobbled as he kissed his wife’s dead hand. 

“ _I did_.” He cries, a broken man, against Vianne’s lithe fingers as he stroked them. Looking at the pristine narrow of her fingernails. He then reached across, and stroked the innocent softness of Julia's silky hair.

“I would have spared the girl. But she reminded me too much of, _her_.” Lucille spat. Narrowing her eyes at Vianne.

Thomas doesn’t speak. _He can’t_. Why couldn’t he _save them? Why wasn’t he here? He should’ve been…. For them to be so scared and afraid without him to protect them caused him pain anew._

 _“I did it for us. All I ever did, I did for us.”_  Those words sicken him. Haunt him. And he tried hard, every day, to let himself forget Lucille’s face.

 

He woke with a jolt.

 

His eyes snapped open, his chest rising and falling furiously fast. He was clammy, his chest, forehead, and neck soaked, his cheeks flushed and he bolts upright in bed, causing the bedframe to rattle. He twists around, and in the dark of the twilight of his bedroom, turns to his bed mate.

She is still fast asleep beside him, looking for all the world like the angelic woman he knew and loved her to be. She lay facing him. Her expression half obscured with her face pressed into the soft down of her pillow. Her bare arm exposed from her nightgown, folded up, her palm flat, pressed under her pillow. Her other arm atop the covers, folded over her waist. He quietly watches her chest rise, and fall, peacefully. Calmly. His hands seek under hers, and his gentle hand carefully cups her stomach, feeling the swelling sign of slumbering life within. His heartbeat races a little less, at that.

Almost immediately, he wrenches the covers off, ignores the cold, and the aches in his body, and quickly rounds the bed. He hauls open the door, and stalks quickly to the nursery, he gently peels open the creaky door, and peers inside. His heart is beating so fast, and loud, he’s amazed the loudness of it doesn’t wake them. And they are peaceful too. He can see. Both slumbering, tiny little lumps, away in their sweet dreams. Arthur sucking his thumb. And Julia with her chubby hands clutching doggedly to her favourite teddy – even in sleep she was protective of it.

He steps in, and leans over, he strokes his gorgeous sons head, and kissed him too. Doing the same to Julia. His beautiful girl. Stroking their sweet little cheeks and telling them both how much their father loved them.

 _He calms. His family was safe. Untouched_.

He shuts the door and slinks back to his bedroom. Then he noticed how worked up, he’d become. His dreams oft left him on a knifes edge. Waking up in the night, crying, lungs bursting, terrified. Some nights, the shaking got so bad, he’d take himself off downstairs to nurse a glass of spirits until his body calmed. He didn’t want Vianne to know. It was his foolish body being stupid. He would pay its quivering no mind. It was all in his head, anyway. There was no ointment, no bandage, no poultice for the sickening, vile, twisted black demons that sometimes lurked, preyed in his head – little did he know, but Vianne had seen more than she let on.

He wanted to settle back into sleep. Truth be told, he was bone tired. Every cell in his body ached, down to his bones, he could feel a dull ringing pain. And though he had fled into the house, which was cold in the early morning, he still felt far warmer than he ought. His mouth was dry, his throat raw, and stinging, though he attributed that to the nightmare. He trudges into the en-suite, filling the sink with ice cool water, he dipped his cupped hands in, and splashed it across his face, moaning lowly thereafter as the bracing ice cooled his feverish skin. He let it drip off his chin, running in rivulets down his face. Feeling parched, he downs atleast three glasses of water, but none seem to take away the roaring fire of his throat. In hunching over the sink, he feels the bones and muscles in his shoulders gripped with a foul ache that made him sigh, as he rubbed a hand over his eyes. He’d slept all night, yet, he still felt exhausted.

Unplugging the sink, he takes the moist flannel he’d wetted, and claps it to the back of his neck, welcoming the icy relief it offered. He goes to sit on the chaise, near her vanity table, catching sight of his reflection in the mirror. His pallor is gaunt, and black dark halfmoons haunt the space under his eyes. He shuts his eyes, and finally goes to wipe away the rawness in them.  

He hears the quilts rustle, and a sleepy voice interrupts him. “Thomas?” Vianne pipes up, opening hooded eyes, and leaning up on her elbows, she blinks herself awake, to see him, out of bed, across the room. Hunched over, legs spread wide, elbows on his knees as he was up, and out of bed, far earlier than he needed to be. Squinting at her clock, it is _barely five_ in the morning. His head looks up, startled to see he waked her. He winced if he did. She was working today too, he didn’t wish to deprive the expectant mother of his third baby, her much needed rest.

“Go back to sleep, my love, didn’t mean to wake you.” He speaks. His throat, burned with his speaking. It was as if he’d drunk acid. And it sounded raspier, more hoarse, than usual.

Of course, she doesn’t listen, she folds the covers off herself, and pads across to him. Her body looking slender and lovely in her new, black silk nightgown, with lace trimmed across the neckline. It turned her figure into a cluster of lovely black curves, even the baby bump too. He loved the sight of it. Her mussed, sometime curly hair, that she moaned would never be trampled, was thrown over one shoulder. She gets to him, sinks to her knees, and her cool hand clasps his cheek. Her expression is sleepy, yet her eyes, are vigilant, measuring, assessing him. He looks simply at her, eyes brimming with love.

“Bad dream. Stupid thing, so vivid it woke me up. I’ll be alright in a while...” He tells her as she cups her hand to his forehead, he shuts his eyes as he does. Her hands were soft, despite their labouring, domesticated, and nursing trials.

“I very much doubt that.” She speaks wryly. “The reason you had such a bad dream, Thomas, is that you’re running a _raging fever._ Probably why it was so bad..” She tells him, flitting into the washroom, she returns with a thermometer, and before he can protest, she shoves it in his mouth. And kindly, but firmly, she has her pocket watch to hand and is taking his pulse. _Ever the nurse._

He feels like he must behave himself now. Especially as he removes the thermometer and tuts disapprovingly at him. She puts her pocket watch down. He bites back a cheeky quip that she had to put her uniform on if she required him to follow orders.

“Sore throat?” She asks, narrowing her eyes.

He nods. “Very.” He rasps. Fire in his oesophagus building. Scraping like broken glass and nails at his vocal chords.

“Headache?” She presses, feeling the back of his neck was as hot at his forehead, despite his efforts of cooling down with his flannel.

“Somewhat.” He lets on. But in actuality, it feels like he has a headache approximately the same size as that of France.

“Aching everywhere? Exhausted?” She further probes, tilting his face up, she see’s his eyes are not dilated. So she could rule out any gastroenteritis related fears that bubbled up with her diagnosis.

He sniffled, and nods. It hurt too much to speak.

“Influenza.” She sighs. The hand that cupped his face, ran her thumb slowly along his cheekbone.

“Back into _bed with you_ , Sharpe.” She orders softly, kissing his head. He goes to - _foolishly_ \- interject.

“I have to be in the office this afternoon, we have a shipment of-“ He begins. Stopping at the sudden hardness to be found in her eyes. She wilfully stuck out her chin, and sent him a -not-to-be-contested look that would’ve turned the devil to stone. He knew then, his place was bed until _she said_ otherwise.

“I’ll send word to your foreman. But _you are_ not stepping foot on that factory floor, you’ll get your workers ill, and start an epidemic.” She chides him, going across the room to tug on her gown, folding her hair out the back of it, and tying the sash tight.

“What about the children?” He rasps, fearful. She crooks a mothers grin.

“They’ve had every vaccine possible under _the sun_ , courtesy of Erik. They’ll be hale. Thomas.” She smiles. “That’s what the poor mites get for having a nurse for a mother.” She suggests, moving back across to him.

“ A _very lovely_ nurse…” He flirts. Accelerating into a coughing fit not long after. She crossed to him, helped him stand, and get his wiry body into bed as she’d ordered him too. He was going to say that he didn’t need help,  but the white hot pain in his grating bones shut down his pride. One by one, he folded his heavy feeling legs into bed, and she pulls the warm covers over him.

He relaxes back into the soft bed with a grateful sigh. She tucks the covers in around him and signs in sympathy for him as she cups his cheek, stroking up through his hair, hearing him sniffle and splutter a cough into his hand. His wiry chest sinking and hacking.

“Sloane’s liniment, beechams powder. And honey and lemon in hot water. Unless you’d prefer tea?” She asks.

“Honey?” He asks her, perplexed.

“The most soothing cure for a sore throat.” She explains, he nods in understanding.

“What about Erik? You’re on the ward today aren’t you?” He wheezes. Shifting about, getting comfortable.

“It looks like my nursing administrations shall be far more required, here.” She smiles, sitting on the bed, by his hip. His hand found hers, and held it gratefully.

“Will you wear the uniform?” He asks in a lusting hint, his smile twitched, crooking at the corners. And the laugh lines were by his eyes.

“Careful. Patient. Or I’ll foist some of my hideous turkey neck, and potato peeling soup on you.” She warns. He visibly winces.

“I’d settle for a bed bath..” He pipes up.

“Cad.” She barks in a laugh. “Do try to behave.” She smiles. Though that did make her cheeks go awfully red, with the thought that not all her patients were quite so handsome. Nor did they look quite so beautiful when they slept. “I’ll have Erik come assess you later if he can spare the time for a home visit.” She pats his leg, then rises to cross the room and be useful.

His eyes felt heavy. So heavy. As if his lids were weighted with tonne weight all of a sudden. He rests back into the pillows, allowing his eyes to droop shut. He hears her go about her business, moving about the room, opening the shutters, and letting a small slither in the window to let some – partially – fresh air in. Less he get stuffed up on hot air. She glances out of the window for a moment, seeking a copper sunrise blaze the clouds over the semi clear London sky. She is amazed to hear birdsong, and sees several flitting goldfinches dart through the air, bobbing and weaving through next doors garden. The cool mornings air drifted coolly, invitingly over her face, and she let it. She breathed it in deep, the smell of moist grass, soot, and dirt.

Hopefully once day, not too far away, they’d be in more rural surroundings than these. She found herself aching for the comforts of a country home more and more since Thomas had suggested it. Yes, of course, there came drawbacks, she would miss her nursing. But the thought of waking up rolling fields and country air made her ache to know it. She had a feeling her, and London, would soon part ways with her merry little family. She shakes the curtains out from dust

By the time she rounds the bed again, one hand on the stead near his feet, she can see his breathing is deep and slow, and that he was almost asleep already. She smiles, watching him sleep for a second. Smiling. She was happy. Slipping out the door, she left the patient to sleep.

She went downstairs to go and put the kettle on, and start on helping Mrs. B prepare a restorative chicken broth for him for lunch. She’d acquiesce to at least one of his requests – she’d atleast put her nurses apron on to tend to him.

 

~

 


	35. Ending Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; No Ordinary Love - Sade

 

__

_~_

 

 _Some men_ , Thomas thought, _were cursed_ to be bound in holy matrimony to women who barely expressed their interest in them. He had associated with, and knew people who had marriages of convenience, whereby if they saw one another in a day, they were lucky. One of his colleagues had once mentioned to him, after his polite enquiry into his wife’s health, that _he supposed_ she was _fine,_ he knew nothing otherwise as to the state of her. He could remember being shocked by this.

The sheer, _madness,_ of that notion had plagued his mind for weeks. Wealthy people seemed to exist around each other like outlying planets in orbit. Only seeing one another in passing, far off in the distance. In-between them and their separate bedrooms, lives, and marriage, scurried maids, and valets and other members of staff. Of whom spent more time with their masters, than the person who they’d married. _It was almost inhumane._

He would personally thank every star up in gods heavens that Vianne didn’t just blithely waft a hand in his direction, and have him tended to by their housemaid the live-long day. He supposes – _knows_ – it is the nurse in her _that had_ to mend sickness where she found it. But he _also knows_ , down to his very core, and the very _bones of him_ , that she was also not like everyone else of her wealth and rank. She was the daughter of a Marquess. She was raised into privilege, and etiquette. She went to finishing school for proper young ladies, for heaven’s sake. But where others would be stiff, and proper because of such an upbringing, she broke that mould. She was kind hearted, and _too in love_ to treat him as other women alike her station would’ve.

He slept, _thankfully without dreaming_ , after the soothing honey concoction she’d made. The fire in his throat lessened, and he slipped away into easy, dark, slumber. When he next came too, he found her palm pressed to his head, taking in his temperature. She then orders him up, strips him, gently, so as to appease his aching muscles, throwing away his clammy clothes to be washed, and she marches him into the ensuite where she’d drawn him a bath. The heat of it managed to drive away the lingering ache in his bones, plus the familiar assaulting scent of menthol and oil of wintergreen making his nose run, told him that it had been poured in the water to ease his stiff muscles. And after a five minute soak, letting the steam make his skin clammy, he feels his pain was almost gone. After ten minutes, his muggy head was clear, his body restored to almost its normal ability. And he very much wants to thank his nurse with the biggest kiss he can muster.

When she comes to check up on him, he is almost asleep, and at serious risk of drowning should he become any more relaxed. She could’ve poured him out of the bath he was so at ease. With quick efficiency – considering he was dripping wet and stark naked – she wraps a towel round his trim hips, and another round his neck, warm waves of oil of wintergreen emanated from his pale, water dotted, skin. She swipes a towel through his hair. Seeing he looked a little more recovered than he had earlier. The gauntness of his face is long gone. He slumps against the edge of the bath, and she can tell by his posture and dullness of his eyes, that he was still exhausted. She helps him dress in fresh clothes, and tucks him into the freshly remade bed. The sheets were crisp, starched and cool as he slid into them, and after his head sinks into the snowy, fresh featherdown pillow, he is lost to the world again.

He comes to once again, when he hears the soft rustle of skirts sweep the bedroom carpet, and the rattle of fine china against a tray. That soft clink of a cup clattering in the too-big rim of a saucer. He gently peels his ridiculously heavy eyelids open to survey the room before him, a soft smile crooking his lips as he knew who he’d find there when he did. _Lo and behold, there she is_. If he had any energy in his weary, useless body, he’d wish to summon a painter here, right in this _very moment_ to capture her essence in oils, for all eternity. A rare slope of merry afternoon sunshine slants into the room, striking across the end of the bed, at his feet. Casting a soft glow to halo her where she was on the chaise.

We watched her carry a bed tray across to the dresser. He lazily observed how the sunlight kiss across her pale complexion in a way he _so envied_ it doing. Her hair turned to spun fire, and she tucked a rogue curl back behind her ear, unaware she was being watched in performing a menial task. He watches those cerulean eyes turn beautifully in his direction, as she heads across to the bed with a breakfast tray in her hands.

“ _Up_ you sit, Sharpe.” She commands with a gentle smile.

“ _Yes_ , Nurse.” He japes, heaving himself up in bed. He didn’t have the energy to quip with her. He’d willingly announce _she_ was in charge today.

Even in pulling himself up, he was reminded that such a task was of a gargantuan effort. His every muscle _screamed_ with the strain. His voice raspy from sleep, his throat dry and in agony once again. She could see again the rise in his temperature evidenced by his dewy glow of perspiration. She smiles, holding the tray, before she sits the thing to rest either side of his legs, pinning him to the bed. Still standing, she lifts the dome off the bowl, and turns the handle of the saucer in his direction. He could see the contents of it was the same concoction she’d forced down him earlier, another steaming saucer of that amber nectar that soothed his throat.

For his throats sake, there was a simple broth, still steaming and piping hot, with plump, succulent breast of chicken, cut thick, as were the green vegetables and carrots suspended in the delicious thin soup. He found his appetite was diminished today, but that soup looked like _the most_ glorious thing in the world.

She sat back on the armchair she’d moved closer to the bed, to be by his side. An embroidery hoop was in her lap, aswell as a book at her feet. She smiled gladly as she watched him tuck in. The silver soup spoon looking out of place in his large, lithe hands. She watches as she threads another stitch through, to see the steam from the hot soup curling up against his face as he closed his eyes in pleasure as he ate.

“ _My specialty_ , that soup. Simple but effective. It seems in my first months in nursing was _nothing_ to do with letting me near patients. I spent my time at St Thomas’s, as a probationer, scrubbing floors, swilling bedpans, stirring porridge, or making broth to later ladle it down the throat of _some poor, unfortunate_ man.” She smiles.

“ _This_ man _is very thankful_ for your skill.” He rasps. His voice was twice as hoarse as usual. The heat of it was a welcome relief to his oesophagus. He ate the whole bowl, and almost had the _pattern off the plate, too_. Then he starts on the Autumn pudding. A boiled, sticky pudding. To be made in colder weather, hence the name. usually a fixture near Christmas time, in _her memory, anyway_. He drank the honey and lemon drink, and then she retrieves the tray. Placing it on the dresser. When she turns back around, he is almost dead to the world again in slumber.

She kisses his forehead. And he grumbles a grateful smile at her. His hooded eyes peek open to watch her. One inventors hand slid up over her apron and gently touched her rounded belly. She strokes a hand down his face.

“I’ll be right here if you need me.” She whispers softly after another sweet kiss to his cheek. Strokes his hair. When he looks up at her, his eyes were full of love, admiration, and gratitude.

“ _I’ll always need you_.” He replies with a wide grin before he is off in rest again. She smiles, sitting down in her chair, she is glad to ease her aching feet. She glances over the empty dishes his hunger had ravished. It was amazing how something so simple as a _recipe_ could stir, pluck at, a far off memory. As Thomas sleeps, she takes to her embroidery, and reminisces...

The pudding was her recipe she’d learned, penned, from Mrs Batton, the cook they had when she was a girl. It could be found on a yellowed, aged parchment, written in the her own hand, safely nestled in the cookbook the woman had gifted her with, on the kitchen shelf by the flour jar. One of her few possessions she had, _cherished,_ from her childhood, tucked around the house. At the time of her parents unfortunate demise, she was left to the care of nursemaids, nanny’s, and cooks, until her Uncle came up from London to arrange his late brothers estate.

Vianne, as a young child had to deal with knowing her parents had gone out one night, and were _never coming_ home again. And then, she had to watch her _possessions and her home_ be sold away to the next of - _greedy, male_ \- kin in her fathers will. Some thrice removed, distant, fat, gouty cousin. The law didn’t yet benefit orphaned girls. With that, off she was packed to boarding schools, grammar schools and finishing schools, until she was _well past_ being a teenager. No more than _three meagre_ possessions she cherished aside her various school uniforms. These were; Her mother’s silver hairbrush. One of her fathers book’s on medieval poetry. And  a cookbook. 

Her luggage was always _so very_ light when she was shifted from school to school.

Most other girls went home for Christmas. She was usually the only boarder left with a matron teacher, in great, empty, echoing schools when came the holidays. Her uncle had _no time_ for a young girl being trampled under his feet in his London home. Vianne’s childhood was spent mostly _alone_. She grew up very quickly after her parents were taken from this world. She _had little other_ choice than to be _her own_ person. She’d grown up in the company of strangers, yet, it didn’t hit her until she shared this fact with her friends about her childhood, and about her orphaned status, but at their shocked, hurt expressions, she actually came to the realisation that _it was_ a _sad fact after all_

She had some, faded, hazy snippets of happiness that she could remember. Of course, being the knock kneed, gaudy red haired, quiet orphan as a girl, had not opened her up to _easy,_ nor empathetic, treatment from other spoilt girls with whom she attended her various boarding schools. She was teased, trodden down with sly remarks. And usually addressed by these girls as a rank below a _very lowly form_ of pond life. Not all, but most saw her as a thing to be pitied, mocked, or ignored. Save for a few. One of those few, being Jane Dodson. She never tried to dip Vianne’s hair in the inkwells, or push her to the ground to graze her spindly knees, and run off laughing. She never pulled Vianne’s books out of her hands and launch them into a muddy puddle.

Jane treated Vianne with nothing but kindness, and apologised for the awful behaviour of her set. The two became firm friends. For they were both bright things, possibly the brightest students in the classroom, they stuck together. Their quiet resolves suited one another. And when Jane learned that Vianne was to be left alone during the Christmas holidays. She wouldn’t hear of it. She wrote her father and asked if Vianne could come and take Christmas with them. Before she could even fret she was imposing, Jane’s indomitably sweet mother sent a reply that Vianne would _never_ forget; _Jane dear_ , _bring that poor girl home at once._

The rest of it seemed as _if a dream_. She spent her Christmas with the Dodson’s. and she felt as if she hadn’t _smiled so_ in such a long time.

They went ice skating in Hyde Park on the long water when it froze. Janes mother had knitted Vianne a pair of _her own_ mittens so her hands wouldn’t get cold. They ate roast chestnuts by the fireside at night as Janes Father read Dickens to them. A Christmas Carol, of course.

Come Christmas morning, the girls awoke early and rose to see what presents they had. Jane excitedly opened her gifts with glee. Vianne can remember she almost wept with happiness as Jane’s mother handed her an armful of presents too. She had hugged her _so tight_ she was certain her tears came off on the wonderful woman’s gown. They’d been so kind as to purchase her new hair ribbons. Emerald, Sapphire, Ruby and Ivory silk. A Jane Austen Novel. (Jane had Northanger Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice, Vianne had Persuasion and Mansfield Park, Janes father laughed and said they could swap when they’d finished) A fine box of dried fruit, nuts and clementine’s. and another of Turkish delight jellies. And a huge ribbed jar, of wrapped French bon bons.

She was amazed to find Hector had sent her along something too, the first contact he’d had with her _in months_. It was a small, silver and diamond slide hair comb. It was resting in a red velvet box, and that day, Vianne felt like part of a family for _the first time_  since she was ten.

The Christmas lunch she remembered fondly. They pulled crackers, and gorged themselves silly on goose, with bread sauce, gravy, golden roast potatoes, and stuffing. Afterwards, there were cakes, jellies, and Christmas puddings aswell as sponge and treacle. She’d never been so full, nor stupidly happy. Returning to school after such an interlude, would’ve _seemed a chore_ , were it not for the fact Vianne went back with more possessions to cherish, and memories to relive so long as she needed them to feel happy by once more. Christmases with the Dodson’s became a regular thing from then on, even when Jane and her were both _fully grown_ women. With jobs and prospects, marriage proposals and all else. Their Christmases remained _the same._

When Janes Mother grew ill with the horridness that was cancer, they didn’t even need to ask her for her aid. Vianne was there, just as Jane and her family had been for her. She tried to wave off Vianne many times, _humbly,_ saying surely she had better patients to tend too. Vianne wouldn’t hear of it. She sat by Mrs Dodson’s beside for her last few months. She mopped her brow. Tended to her sick bucket, in the way a lowliest maid would. She helped her dress, helped her bathe. Helped her look presentable each day. _Even if_ she felt rotten.

Near the end, Vianne sat with her for a whole day, weeping as she held her hand and let her know _how much_ her friendship, and that of her daughters, and her families kindness, had meant to her. Janes Mother had smiled. And uttered weakly _“No child should grow up in this world, and think themselves alone, and unloved.”_  

After her passing, Every Christmas day, after their splendid lunch, Vianne, Jane and Mr Dodson would go to her grave and leave small tokens of Christmas there, so she was _never forgotten._ They tied hair ribbons around flowers. As Mr Dodson was raised a Jew, they placed pebbles on her headstone. And Vianne always left a handful of wrapped bon bons at the base. For she’d exclaimed once, they were her favourite.

Vianne reached back in her hair, where she sat in her chair, watching over Thomas, and pulled the small silver hair comb out of her hair. It was tarnished and worn now. It was only silver plated, and the diamonds he suspected were false, paste, but that didn’t stop her, as a child, dreaming it was crafted of the purest silver, and real priceless diamonds. She felt like a queen wearing it as a girl.

But as a woman, she began to see its _true value_ as a gift shining through. The plate was worn off, a couple of the paste diamonds had fallen off. And she looks down at the thing in her hands, suddenly feeling _very differently_ about it as she once had.

This morning she’d slid it in her hair out of habit. But now, she saw as to its intentions. Hector was _fabulously rich_ , but he hadn’t even coughed up enough to buy her something expensive to last. He probably grabbed it from a pawnbrokers window, there were scratched initials of _LM_ on the side. He probably procured it as he was heading past, and hadn’t time, and Christmas was a few days away. So he’d better get his ill thought of niece _, something. Or  better yet._ Sent his secretary, Mrs Lambkins, off to fetch it for him. Telling her to spend no more than a ha’penny.

She didn’t feel cheated, she was just hit with a wave of how little the man _actually had cared_ about her. Two lovely, welcoming strangers took her in their own home, fed her, and bought her a plethora of gifts. _Her own relative_ had given her a shoddy second-hand hair comb as a meagre afterthought.

She reached down to her feet, and picked up her tattered Jane Austen novel. The cover was cracked, and peeling away from the binding. The yellow stained pages were slightly warped where it had gotten wet some point, long ago. The bookmark which sat in the middle of the book, on the page she knew by heart, was a emerald green hair ribbon. It was tattered, frayed, and threadbare. _But she couldn’t bear parting with it._

“You’re looking _very intently_ at that book, my love.” Came a rasp from the bed beside her. She looks up, seeing her patient was slightly awake, on his side peering across at her from under an unruly array of inky hair.

“ _Was I?”_ She asks. Unaware. She pats the book. Smooths a hand across its cracked, battered cover and gripped it in both hands, before setting it down. She lets her hand linger on the cover for a long second, looking fondly at it.

“A Present from someone who was very dear to me once. _Still is.”_  She explained.

“I was going to offer to buy you a _new one_. One without a cracked, peeling cover. With gold tipped pages. But now I can see that _wouldn’t be appropriate_.” He smiles. She grins and chuckles.

“ _Too_ sentimental, I’m afraid.” She tuts. In deprecation to herself.

“ _Not_ a fault I wish to complain about. _Trust me.”_ He tells her lovingly. His warm eyes meeting hers made her stomach turn hotter by ten degrees. Like butter sliding down hot toast.

“How do you feel?” She asks, leaning over, she presses her palm to his forehead again. He was feeling much cooler now. That shot of morphia she gave him this morning had done the trick.

“Bored of _sleep_.” He yawns. Scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Your body _needs rest_ to recover. It’s working overtime to _fight off_ that vicious cold.” She explains.

“My excellently beautiful nurse is keeping my pain at bay.” He smiles. His eyes were shut as he spoke.

“Flatterer.” She clips out.

“Hungry?” She enquires.

“Not _as such.”_ He answers.

“At any rate. Fluid is the next best thing.” She crosses to the dresser and pours him a pitcher of water. His throat would’ve been dry from his sleep. She walks back across and he drains it in one go. Sitting up, she places the glass down on the side and retakes her seat. Her brain was skirting around a sore subject that she was eager to bring up. But she couldn’t quite _bring herself too._ Thankfully he leads the conversation elsewhere.

“What are our _little imps_ up too?” He asks, refolding his limbs as he adjusted on the bed. His shirt gaping down his sternum, for a moment she grew transfixed by the pale triangle of his skin on show. She supposed she’d better answer him, rather than ogle him.

“I helped Jeanie bathe and dress them. We played in the nursery for an hour. I helped with luncheon, and now they have been wrapped up and off on a walk to the park with Jeanie and Mrs B.” She explains, having her embroidery to hand once more.

“I slept through all that?” He asks, astounded.

“You slept _like Morpheus himself_ for the best part of the day.” She explains. “But that’s the mark of a _good patient_.” She compliments.

“Glad I could please.” He grins, almost laughing. “Though I must say, I’ve not slept so deeply in a while…” He supposes. His eyes flutter shut, and she watches him rest. She so wants to bite her tongue. Truly she does. _But she can’t_. She knows there was a deeper rooted pain festering in him. Deeper than any cold.

“Thomas. Have your _nightmares_ been keeping you awake?” She asks lowly.

His eyes snap open, and he turns to look at her, shocked. She sent him a worried look.

“How _do you?-“_   She watched his Adam’s apple bob and his voice wavered. He felt so wretched, and ashamed that she’d found out.

She looked agonised for him.

”You think I _don’t hear you_ cry out at night?” She asks. 

Too many times had she been hastily torn out of sleep from his shouts... Begging. Pleading. His wrestling and bargaining with the biggest demon in his head. _Writhing_ in the sheets. _Twisted and tangled._ Soaked _through_ with cold sweat. His face screwed into a pained expression as he thrashed about. Shouting. 

“My love, we share a bed. And I know I flatter myself enormously here, but, I can _usually tell_ when someone _is hurting_. You wake up some mornings, _exhausted_ , with bags as black as _spades_ under your eyes _and a tremor_ in your hand. Some nights, I wake up, in a cold bed, alone, and when I look downstairs, I see you in the parlour imbibing a large glass of something very strong. And, I’ve _noticed_ that when you read bedtime stories to Julia and Arthur _you’re_ usually the first one who falls asleep.”

Thomas cursed himself under his breath for thinking she hadn’t noticed. _He’d been a blind fool. And not for the first time in his life._

“I didn’t know how, to even… _bring up….I_ ” He began. She listed closer to him and gripped his hand tight. Stroking it. Loving him.

“Its about _Lucille, isn’t it.”_ She asks. _Spot on._ He closes his eyes and a roguish tear drops out.

 _“Usually._ It’s her trying to _control me again_. To bend me to her will. Or to try and take you and the children _away from me_. What I imagine she would have done if you hadn’t have _left me_. And some other horror I cannot even _speak_ aloud…” He says, his voice raspy and sore with emotion.

”....And the worst part is; she _always wins.”_ He cries in a hush. 

Her heart aches, throbbing dull in her chest with pain, for being able to see his now, _so_ clearly. It had taken a while for her to understand Thomas and Lucille, and she can not comprehend _how_ , but, once the rage, shame and humiliation on her part subsided, she began to see how Thomas was being _crushed_ by her rule. The man she loves was different to the version Lucille had of him. Hers was a _boy,_ she loved, and controlled. To her, he was a _small, frail_ thing to be protected and mothered. And she found ways of suppressing the man underneath. But to Vianne, _she saw_ the finesse, the heart, and geniality of his character when away from his tyrannical ruler. She saw him as the man he wished to be. The kind man he was now.

“Thomas. I’m a realistic enough person to know that _if I had_ stayed at Allerdale, she would have had her way about… _getting rid... of me._ ” She told him evenly. “And she would have used _everything_ in her arsenal to blackmail you into silence and inaction.” She says with a heavy heart.

He counteracts her truth with a very hot, angry, contesting look.

“She’d have had to get _through me first_ , to _get you._ ” He assures her. Vianne closes her eyes, and when she looks back up a small smile and her tear filled eyes capture his attention.

“ _My love. Please_ , don’t consider that because of your nightmares, you are a foul person to me. _I know what kind of man you are_. And I love that man down to _his very bones_. You are one who dearly loves me and our children. You tuck them into bed and kiss them goodnight. And you _are good_. There isn’t one man who works in your foundry that can _badmouth you_. Nor any of _my acquaintance_ either. I know sometimes dreams can feel real, and _horribly accurate_. But please rest assured. I do _not, and never_ will, think any less of you for feeling this way about thoughts of her. Because for a time, she _was all you knew._ And I know she belittled you, used you, and kept you weak, in her vile way, Thomas, her love for you _was genuine. As is mine_.” She accepts.

“How can you _accept_ that about _me? It’s rotten.”_ He cries.

” _Perhaps_ , If I loved you less, I could hate you more. But we both know _that’s not possible.”_ she starts.

 _“And,_ May I point out, thatyou accepted I ran and kept _two very small_ secrets from you.” She counteracts.

 “You didn’t hate me for it. So _I cannot_ hate you for being governed by love.”

 _“Love?”_ He asks mockingly. _It used to feel like anything but._ She meets his look earnestly. And he can see she meant with _every_ syllable, what she said. How could she forgive him? Knowing he had been supposed to love another whilst he was married to her.

“Past trauma doesn’t _melt away_ , Thomas. Time may grow around it. But it stays. Like Shrapnel. And eventually, it will _tear_ its way out. And it’s ok _to need_ someone to listen to you when it does. I _will never_ dismiss your pain. Be it _real, or emotional_.” He swallowed, knowing she was right. It had to be _them_ versus the problem. _Not him struggling with it on his own. That was what she was trying to make him see._

“My nightmare is always my biggest fear. Her, taking _you_ , and Julia _from me_. _Taking you where I can’t follow_. And her, keeping Arthur alive to raise him as a Sharpe.” He explains softly. Vianne nods.

“Well. She won’t take me. Or Julia. And, I think now is the time to mention that, Arthur, and Julia, _will be_ raised as Sharpe’s. Despite all protest.” She tells him with a loving smile. He looks across to her.

“I wouldn’t wish them the dishonour of assigning their surnames to mine.” He tells her.

“They _will be_ raised as Julia and Arthur Earnest-Sharpe. So they know they have _two_ heritages and ancestry’s to protect and cherish.” She tells him. “I already took the forms to the Department for the Registrations of Births, Deaths and Marriages.”

His face was such a picture she hardly knew how to regard it. _Shock? Love? Disbelief?_ She cannot pinpoint it.

“I know that now, you feel like you want nothing more than to bury your past. But one day, _possibly years_ from now. I won’t have it sinking in that you’re the _only Sharpe_ left. You will have me. Julia. Arthur. And little no name here. We will be Earnest-Sharpes. And we will be your family. Beside you. And there to love you _for better or for worse_.” She says simply. And he knows _he cannot_ fight her on it. She had that _immovable_ gleam in her eyes. That wilful tilt of her chin that had won her _many_ an argument.

“I don’t know how to reply to that, my dear.” He tells her lovingly. He caresses her hand. His heart so full of love and disbelief. With the knowledge that she loved him, despite all his faults, his sins. And his children would grow up, being loved, and loving him in return. And she had seen fit to make sure they knew that they were his too. They were Sharpes. _And they’d be proud of it_.

She would _damn well_ make sure he had everything in his life that neither of them had been granted as children. Love. Warmth. And the comfort of _a family_. Not loneliness, desperation and misery. She would no longer be the knock kneed orphan who spent Christmas’s alone at boarding schools. And he’d be ungoverned, and suffocated by the woman he loved.

“Then say nothing at all. And just accept it. As your nurse, I’d advise it.” She smiles.

And he does.

 

~

 

 


	36. The Informal Society of Loveworn Souls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; La Vie En Rose - Edith Piaf

 

 ~

 

He slept fitfully. His dreams composed together like a ragged patchwork quilt. His fever rose when night came, soaring heat through his veins. He was sweating, and then shivering. His ministering angel was there through _it all._ He had brief snippets of memory of her cool hands on the back of his neck, or his brow, replacing wet cloths when needed. When his mouth and throat feel dry, and like he’s swallowed an entire dressmakers _ream_ of pins, she dribbles ice cool water across his lips, or that honey concoction that tastes better _than nectar_ to him. And he is soothed, and sleep ebbs in and out like the tide

He sleeps, though his tired, aching shell of a body didn’t feel as though it had gained much rest. His fever eventually breaks, his body returning to a normal climate. He feels disgustingly clammy, and his eyes have never been heavier. The light outside shifts only just into morning, that hued cobalt signifier that gave the indication that dawn wasn’t far away now. He twists round, and his lazy eyes fixate on the figure curled up into the armchair beside him, curled up like a housecat. Her knees brought up to her chest, her stockinged feet crossed at the ankles, her head bowed to rest on the lip of the chairs headrest. One hand flat under her head, the other crossed over her waist, slung over her stomach, as if in protection for the babe within. Her chest falls and rises softly, and her hair chignon, so perfect in the light of day, now had large sections draped down her neck and shoulders, coils invading her forehead, her sleeves are rolled up, and it was evident that her day of nursing and caring has taken its _toll_ on her too.

He feels an odd _pang_ of guilt strike his heart like a _stabbing spear._

She was caring for him _so diligently,_ but she had _no one,_ and _never had,_ to care after _her_. To drape blankets over _her_ careworn body after her trials of the day. To bring _her_ a saucer of tea when her feet were _too sore_ to stand anymore. He wanted to soothe after the woman, _his woman,_ who devoted _her every waking second_ to _always_  looking after everyone else around her.

He took a vow to himself, in that feverless, serious, lonely moment, that _he would be that man_ for her. The one who held onto her when she was too tired to speak. The one to kiss her, and hug her at the end of her difficult day. _To be there. Always._

He wants to drape a blanket round her, stroke her ivory soft forehead. Kiss her temple. And get that inviting pull of French perfume that rolled off her persons in wave after delicious wave. But he is _too tired_ , so a gaze is all he can have. He carries on looking at her, watching her sleep, he watches her deep breathing, rhythmic, up, down, and repeat. And before he can fathom it, he is lost to sleep too. His lids slide slowly down, and blackness invades him again.

He thinks he’d be bored or tired of sleeping by now, but, as she said, it was what his body had sorely needed. Having been run ragged with the trials of late. The various injuries and hardships he’d been forced through. Though he’d go through them a _thousand times over_ if he had too, he’d suffer the twelve labours of Hercules, if the end result would still be that he’d won _his Vianne_ back. Well, maybe not quite twelve labours as a Roman hero. Eight trials of a dashing, scarred inventor, didn’t have _quite_ the same mighty ring to it. He would be naive indeed, to expect a bothersome free chase for her hand once more.

When he wakes from a slumber that felt similar in span to a thousand years, his head is remarkably clear, and his throat is no more a sticky, dry chasm filled with pins and broken glass. He feels restored, that foul ache which lived deep down in his bones, had eased. He rubs his eyes, yawns, and stretches his limbs out like a reclining panther. Twisting to the side, he can see the chair which his lover had filled, was vacant now. He looks at it for a moment, able to see the indents her body had left behind. An empty teacup rested on the side, as did her tattered book, the bookmark lolloped out from between the pages like a lazy canines tongue.

He shuts his eyes as he rests a moment in the bed. Summoning his long since used strength to get up and attempt a shave, and a much needed bath. Passing his hand over his chin, it felt _more sandpaper_ , than _skin._ His whiskers grown long, neglected in his illness. He groans, lifting his upper body up to rest on his elbows, to tumble out of the bed, and wake himself. When the groaning wood of the bedroom doors bursts open and in toddles a _familiar_ little imp…

Arthur made a beeline for the bed, smiling, giggling, and threw his arms - and teddy – upon the covers, a sure signal that he wished to be hoisted up to join his father. Thomas smiles, twists about and reaches for his boy. Whisking him off his feet, he settles back into the pillows cradling his son in his arms. Arthur stuck his thumb in his mouth, and settles nicely onto his fathers’ chest, gurgling, clutching his teddy so tight it was almost in threadbare _bits_. Thomas holds him, the soft little lump that he was, he smelt like ivory soap and clean linen. An indication of his mothers care. He nestles his chin on his dark waves, shutting his eyes and breathing him in. The silk of Arthur’s podgy cheek cushioned against his fathers shoulder.

Not far off in the house, Thomas smiles into his sons hair as he hears, what could only be, the call of an exasperated mother. _“oh,_ Arthur.” Vianne chides, tutting mildly. A few haphazard buttons on his shirt, and lack of footwear led Thomas to believe she had just been trying to wrangle clothes on the little devil, and he’d made a daring escape when her back was turned. Not a moment later, the door is gently pushed open again, and his two gorgeous girls appear the other side of it. Vianne stooped as she walked along, holding Julia’s hand. Whom was dressed nicely, with a cobalt ribbon in her hair, and her scarlet tunic laced dress and frilly white drawers. Arthur had clearly _not_ shared his sisters _patience_ toward his appearance. His little girl tottered quickly to come to the bed, straining to come see her father, though still holding onto her mothers hand, dragging her across the room, calling out her nickname for her father, which turned out to be _‘Gonk’_ from his trying to teach them a nursery game. His lover had changed too, gone was the neutral ensemble of yesterday. Now she donned a dove grey skirt, and a silken indigo blouse that gelled so well with her bright, copper hair.

Vianne watches Thomas sink down, smiling as he saw that ‘Gonk’ still stuck. Matter of fact, it was one of her _most used_ words, now. Since she began to speak.

 _“Gonk.”_ Came the little giggle, from Arthur this time. _In for a penny, in for a pound…_

Thomas looked over to Vianne, tiredly.

“I want _new_ children.” He supposed, looking at both twins with a raised brow as they grinned toothy smiles at him. His lover merely laughs.

“Come on then, _give Gonk_ a kiss, now he’s all better..” Thomas holds his cheek out to Julia and she obliges him with a wet smacking kiss. Arthur settles for merely snuggling.

“He didn’t _wake you_ did he?” Vianne asks, after heaving Julia up onto the bed, who had instantly piled onto the cuddling lump of her brother, clutching onto Thomas’s free shoulder, so he was now _swarmed_. Thomas smiles to her that he woke alone. Both arms were now _entirely_ encumbered with cuddly children who’d missed their father, _even_ for the short amount of time he’d been ill. Julia let out one more cry of ‘Gonk’ before settling down for a cuddle.

“Are you _sure it’s wise_ to have another one, I’m rather running out of _arms._.” He japes. Smiling down at Julia as she looked up to him and giggled puckishly. Vianne tilts her head and smiles, stroking her pale fingers through Julia’s soft auburn locks.

“Little I can do to rectify it now. Perhaps we should’ve tried to be less, _wicked with one another.”_ She teases. When Thomas’s eyes meet hers, she doesn’t need to enquire as to his feeling better, she can see he is recovered by that little spark of _roguish intent_ in his eyes.

“ _Not possible_. I _assure_ you.” He leers.

“I’m relieved to see you so recovered.” She smiles, going to him, as he couldn’t move, and kissing him gently on the lips. As always, his kiss sent a _tingling thrill_ to shoot through her. She felt it in the tips of her fingers, to her stomach. And she hoped she’d _never_ cease to feel it. The potency of his kisses, seemed all the stronger from their absence.

“If you’ve _no objection_ , will you be back on story duty tonight? I’m afraid I’ve _a great deal_ to do before our guests get here tonight…” She says in an uplifting tone. Getting up, she goes across the room to fold some linen.

Thomas starts, surprised. He blinks like a startled owl.

“ _Guests?”_ He asks, bewildered. This caused a foxy smile to cross her lips, in a way that made her look thoroughly like _a vixen_ , to his mind.

“Only four guests. And I can assure you the setting will be quite informal. You can leave your white tie in the wardrobe. Though you do look _so_ dashing in it, _I must admit...”_  She winks with a wide smile.

“May I _ask_ …” He begins, narrowing his eyes, amusedly.

“Did you only _take interest_ in me when we first met, and courted, for the fact I looked _so becoming_ in a dinner jacket?” He probes.

She crosses the room and kisses him solidly. When she pulls back, she smiles.

“ _Yes._ ” And then she dodges away. He couldn’t reach out to swat at her ass, due to Julia and Arthur, but he had a feeling that was, in fact, all by her design. “ _Lord knows_ a woman can’t resist a _full tux_.” She calls out as she wanders into the en suite, replacing a stack of freshly washed towels.

Thomas growled. _He’d get her for that one. When he could move. Again…. Hopefully soon._

“Back to the matter of _dinner..”_ He calls after her. She reappears in the en suite doorway. Her hand each side of the doorframe. She still looked wily, and secretive. _Minx._ She was wearing that smile all females have when they are very pleased with themselves, and, or; hiding something from their poor, dear, stupid husbands.

“I thought of the traditional, Soup, fish, game, cheese and then sweet. But, I think I shall be _terribly un-fashionable_ and simply serve a roast joint with accompaniments, a then a sweet and wine and cheese to finish.” She remarks.

He narrows his eyes again. _That was not what he meant, and she knew it too…_

“Do I get a say in this, as _man and lord_ of the household?” He asks. She smiles _. That was a ‘no’ then._

“You may dwindle the hours away in _whatever manner_ you wish. My love. Jeanie will take our little dears out for their daily constitutional, shortly. I am taking to the kitchens to help Mrs B, and Betsy prepare the _accoutrements’_ for tonight. You may, lounge a while in the bath, take callers in your boudoir, or, do something _ridiculous_ with your hair, like _any decent lady_ of leisure…” She jokes.

He smiles at her.

“ _Just you wait_ til I have _full use_ of my arms again.” He threatens lustily. For she was clearly determined to keep tonight’s sudden dinner party a secret.

“Gladly.” She beams. She crosses back over to him, and cups his neck with one hand, stroking her thumb over his chin. He melted into her touch. Like a pet grateful for the caress of their owner. And though she didn’t own him, she was the sole _owner of his heart._

“Begone from my sight, and _get down_ to those kitchens.” He growls in warning. Though she softens their meaning with a kiss.

“Anything else you need from me, _my heart?”_   She endears. He pretends to think…

“You’ve given me _everything and more_ besides.” He tells her, referring to the two cuddly lumps still engulfing him, aswell as the happy, warm, home that stood around them, and their third cause for joy which was still growing into being, inside her.

“See you in a while, my little treasures.” She calls to all of them as she does as her lord and master bid her, heading for the kitchens with a happy sway in her steps. She steps out onto the landing and starts down the stairs.

“I’ll call you if I need help, _my little knave_ , for assistance in doing something _ridiculous_ to my hair _…”_ He bids out.

She laughs all the way down stairs.

 

 

~

 

 

When she finds him again, he is substantially more vertical, not weighted down by cuddling toddlers, and had done something completely, _not ridiculous_ , with his hair. A wash and a shave, saw him actually as _un-ridiculous_ as could be. He was a handsomely groomed devil tonight.

She admires him from the doorway, having just sprung upstairs, after showing their timely guests through the parlour. Her cheeks were flushed, her chest was dewy, and straggles of unkempt hair made her appearance something for scrutiny, were any of the people downstairs so uptight as to comment of it - which they, _thankfully, were not_ \- and she could grace their presence wearing the same blouse, and skirts she’d worn all day, matter of fact, they’d barely raise a brow. She’d be slaughtered for such a thing in society were she to turn up to a function in this careworn manner.

She watches him for a moment, trying to tease his hair into civility. His broad shoulders cut a figure in his white shirt and waistcoat. Silver satin at the back, and black velvet at the front. Black trousers and his Chelsea boots. Both of which had been pressed and polished to perfection. His sleeves were rolled and his waistcoat top button was undone. And she knew _for why_. He’d bathed the twins and put them to bed. Tasks he never faulted on missing. Sleeves no doubt rolled to help in those duties. She knew if she got closer, he’d smell like the _irresistible tug_ of soft, clean soap and talcum powder atop his fine cologne and shaving soap. Her, somewhat used uterus, does ‘ _notice me’_ cartwheels in her belly, causing butterflies to flutter, and made her take notice of his sexual magnetism. Seeing the father of all her children, groom himself into respectability after taking care of their young. _Oh,_ _She wouldn’t change a thing._

He looks around and catches her observing him from the doorway. She smiles, a bit ashamed she’d been caught.

“Our guests have arrived. They’re awaiting on us in the parlour.” She smiles.

“I hope my hair is _befittingly preposterous_. Me and Jeanie spent half the afternoon on it.” He teases with _that sidewards smile_ that somehow, made her belly all aflutter.

“It’s _perfect._ ” She laughs. Crossing to him and stroking away a stray fleck of lint on his shoulder. She just looks at him, letting her infatuation take over her. Letting her besotted self just admire him for a moment. She leans up, on tiptoes, and presses a kiss to the shaven plane of his cheek. He turns to her then, eyes _hot_ and _blazing_.

She lets out a yelp as his hand snatches into her, sneaking round her waist, cupping her hip, holding her ass and damn near yanking her off her feet, into his body. His free hand cups her neck and she blushes, despite herself. _Well, now, he did warn her_.

She pants against his lips after he unleashes a kiss on her that makes her _knees_ shake. She has to snap herself out of a stupor. _Men that knew how to kiss like that were a danger to humanity._

“You _missed._ ” He tells her, referring to the demure kiss she planted on his cheek.

“How _silly_ of me…” she rasps in a kiss strained husk. He leers his agreement.

“Shall we head down?” He asks her, tucking a curl of hair back behind her ear. Her skin pimples where he touched her, pricking up in awareness of _the pleasure_ he could cause.

“Can’t keep these _mystery_ guests waiting forever…” He then adds. He links her arm in his, and they head toward the door.

“Of course not, my little petal blossom.” She smiles, squeezing his hand. He sighs a manly growl of irritation.

“Between you and Julia, I’m struggling to retain _my dignity_.” He exasperates in a friendly way.

“I think _it’s darling_ that she calls you ‘Gonk.’” Vianne smiles. He shot her a look of pretend irritation.

“Where did _that come from_?” He asks.

“You tried to teach them Duck, Duck, Goose. Gonk originated from a two year olds incapability to grasp S’s, as of yet. You know the trouble they had with pronouncing ‘Sharpe’ it sounded more like _thhark_.” She tells him.

“Can’t I be, Papa? or dad? Or even Father. Something with a bit more… _perspicacity._ Rather _than..”_ He couldn’t bring himself to utter the silly word.

“Welcome to Fatherhood. _Gonk_.” She smiles. He can’t help laughing either.

 _“Gonk_ it is.” He sighs, loosing this battle.

“I think you’ll be ‘ _Gonk’_ well into your late eighties if Julia has her way…” Vianne warns, as they round the stairs.

“ _Oh_ goodie. Something to look forward to in _my dotage.”_  He answers as they round the banister, coming onto the tiled, foyer floor. Their shoes clack onto it, signalling to their guests, their hosts arrival.

“Pray, _Indulge me,_ am I acquainted with these people?” He asks her as they cross round the hallway table. Which today bore a huge vase of sprouting pale pink flowers. Peonies, Roses, lilies. Sickling the air with their sweet fragrance and greenery.

He’d never say, but one of his favourite pastimes, was sitting in the study, off the hallway, through the double doors, he enjoyed taking his mornings cup of tea at his desk, and watching her arrange the flowers for the hallway table. When Henry was revered as her fiancé, the house was _bare_ of such little touches. But now _he_ was here _, every week_ , there was a new bunch of bright flowers, organised neatly in their vase. He made sure of it. She had fibbed and told him she _didn’t need_ flowers, that they were a frivolous expense. He politely disagreed, as he had seen how much she enjoyed arranging them, and appreciating them. He feels miffed at himself that he missed her organising them this morning in his sick-bed.

He watches her leer. “ _A little_ , I’d say.” She smiles affably.

“Are they _a close_ acquaintance?” He delves, trying to dig up more.

 _“Oh,_ somewhat.” She fibs. They were close to the door now, he could hear sounds of merriment, laughter, come from within. Glasses clinking, his gramophone scratching out the crooning Clair de Lune, by Nellie Melba. The fire he could hear crackling in the hearth, warming the room in its late October chill. For the first time in a long while, Thomas felt nervous.

“Will they like me?” He asks finally. Vianne pushes her hand to the door, and gently walks it open. But before she does, she answers with one word.

“ _Undoubtedly.”_

When he glances inside, he levels a kind look at his lover. She’d been winding him up something awful. Because there, in their parlour, sat Erik Harriden, Julian Holland, and Jane Dodson.

“Forgive our _lateness_ , won’t you?” Vianne asks to the room before them, causing everyone to smile.

Thomas looked to their guests, and he doesn’t feel the slightest bit insecure or guarded among these people. This band of brothers, the few good persons she had found to be close too. Erik and Julian are of a similar dress to him, not fully kitted out in a tie and tails. In fact, Erik was in a soft taupe wool suit with a scarlet waistcoat. His tan shoes and pocket watch are his only decoration. Julian was much the same, his honey coloured curls and blue eyes thrown into brilliance with grey suit trousers, and a blue tie that almost looked like it was _the exact_ shade to match his cobalt eyes. His sleeves are rolled too, and he was a relaxed man, at the end of his day, enjoying a glass of port.

Erik stood up to embrace him, not with a handshake, but _a hug_. Thomas could see the fading injury marring around his eye. And the man smelt of clean linen and sandalwood oil.

“Good to see you again. Sharpe.” Erik smiles warmly, almost as warm as his hug. “And this time, not under such dire medical circumstances…” He flatters.

“You and me _are both relieved_ by that fact. I assure you. I could do _without any_ calamity’s for a while, now.”

“I’m not sure how calamity free it would be with _this one_ on your arm…” Erik nodded to Vianne. Thomas grins.

She narrows her eyes. “You _be nice_ , Harriden.” She warns. Before she leans in to receive a hug and a kiss.

“How is your eye now, has the _dizziness_ gone? What about your _vision?”_ She asks, assessing him. Touching to his eyebrow, careful not to clip the tender wound that was still healing.

“I’m _fine_. For the last time. _Liebling_. Out of the two of us, I _think you_ are the one in the more _precious_ disposition now.” He clips back, motioning toward her stomach. She smoothed two hands over it.

“Honestly, _you two_.” Julian called to the both of them. Sipping his port, before setting it down, and coming behind Erik to greet his hosts.

“Apologies.” Vianne winces to him, as she enclosed him in a hug. She smiles. “Doctors, hey? What can _you do_ about them.”

“Not _much_.” Julian tilts his eyesight to Erik and looks disapprovingly at his partner. Before he steps to Thomas.

“Sharpe. You’re looking well. I heard _influenza_ reared its _ugly head?”_ Julian asked kindly. Though he was a lord, and acted, spoke, and moved like one. He had an ounce or two of sensibility that made him kinder than most.

“Still a little fatigued. But I had a _most excellent nurse_.” He turns a loving look across to Vianne. Who caught it, and then turned to embrace Jane. The demure woman stood and hugged her friend. When they pulled away, Jane looked so exulted, there were almost tears in her eyes.

“I still can’t _believe it.”_  Jane smiled in kindness. Clutching hard onto her friends hand. She was, _of course_ , referring to the fact that very recently, Vianne had to open her heart, and spill out _every secret_ that she’d hid from her _dear friend_ these past two years.

She had done so, as Jane had invited her to take tea with her father, Vianne knew she had to grab the opportunity with _both hands_. No sooner had she sat down in their orangery, overlooking their beautifully kept gardens, and accepted a cup of tea, that she let herself ask them for their _forgiveness of her lies…._

 _No_ , she _hadn’t_ been nursing on the continent in Russia, for two years. _No_ , she wasn’t going to marry St Clair. She was, and only ever had been, in love with _one man._ Whom she eloped with, _in secret_. Married _, in secret_. And when came time to divorce him, leave him, and runaway, she kept the fact of his twins secreted from him too. And _now_ , they were together again, and she was with his _third_. She cried this all out to her two good friends. Dabbing her eyes with the handkerchief Mr. Dodson had given her.

She, with a wobbling lip, and tear strewn face, disclosed that she understood if Mr. Dodson wished her _not to associate_ with Jane further. For to avoid the distress of _further taint_. And that she would end their amicable friendship if they wished it.

Janes father, had sat there looking at Vianne for a long moment. His brown eyes sunk far in his wrinkled eye sockets, like raisins sunk deep into a cake. Tilted his head, his thinning snowy hair drifting in the breeze from the open French doors, set down his teacup, reached for Vianne’s hand, and his face broke out into a _most glad_ smile.

“How _lucky you are_ , _motek_ , to find the one man you truly love in this life. Now why on earth would I stop my dear Jane, from being friends with a woman whose only crime, to my eyes, is _falling in love?_ _Eh?”_  He tells her, his Yiddish making her smile.

The endearment was Hebrew for ‘ _my sweet.’_ His voice was always so soft, and kind to her, and faintly echoing his accent. She clasped her gloved hand over her mouth, and smiled laughter through her tears.

He sits back in his chair, as Jane practically _threw_ the table _out of the way_ to hug her friend. Cooing and fussing, gabbling and asking over the children. Their names. And then in tears of mirth, and asking about hers and Thomas’s marriage, before Vianne could get a word in _edgeways_ , Jane had already _flown_ from the room right away to fetch her knitting needles to start on something for the twins.

Vianne laughed when he heard Mr. Dodson speak under his breath as he drunk his tea. Shaking his head. _“Meshuggener.”_  He exasperated as his daughter flitted from the room, lit up, with excitement. “Would you be a dear and pass me the tipsy cake?” He then asked her, not having stopped smiling. “And now tell me about your man? Is he _a mentsh?”_ He asked after she handed over the cake. She’d forgotten they weren’t _ordinary people_ , and thus expecting an _ordinary reaction_ had been _pure folly_ on her behalf.

Vianne smiled at Jane. Her sweetness was an ever prevailing trait. It lived in her sweet smile, and the way she could never talk ill of anyone. Vianne wished she could see this world through Janes kind eyes, some days. When her feet were sore, when she was dog-tired, and aching all over. On days like those, seeing the world with a _spec_ more kindness, alike Janes, she wonders _how_ it would _seem_. The women clutched each other’s hands as fond friends do. Jane and Vianne looked over as Thomas stood chatting with Erik and Julian. And then her friends beams back at her, looking _very pleased_ with herself.

“I told you that night at the opera he was _as good as yours_. With the _sinful_ way he was looking at you..” Jane delighted, nudging Vianne, carefully, in the ribs. Jane watches the woman blush.

“You were _very right._ ” She smiled. “Back then, I was as much _wholly his_ , as he was _mine_. We had each other and we didn’t even _know it._ Or, atleast, I didn’t till he kissed me, _that night_ , at the opera, in his box.” Vianne let out.

“After I _departed?”_ Jane asked her in a wily manner. Vianne raised a brow.

“Thomas wouldn’t have kissed me with you sat _two_ chairs away, Jane. He may _look a rogue_ , I grant you, but he has _some_ decency.” She awarded.

“My father _wasn’t ill._ Vianne.” Jane grinned. Her friends face was the _perfect picture_ of mortification.

“I beg _your pardon?”_ Vianne asked, blinking.

“I _made up_ the whole tale of my father’s illness. I slipped the porter a note after he showed us to the box, and instructed it be given to me in the interval. After the way two of you were _so lovingly_ gazing at one another, I couldn’t very well sit there like a _lemon_ and allow the two of you to _dance about_ each other all night. So I was _the catalyst_ , as it were, for turning your simmering romance into _roaring_ flames.” She grins, very proud of herself.

“If a man and woman are going to _‘have’_ each other, or confess their undying love, Vianne, it’ll be in full formal tie, in an opera box, overlooking Don Giovanni.” She explained.

“You are _a stunning_ little actress, Ms. Dodson.” Vianne looked scandalised. Thankfully, the men also came to sit down on the settee, near the two ladies. Julian retook his seat at the dining table, near to the armchair Erik eased himself into. And Vianne sat on the settee, Jane, _the wily minx_ , slid away to the adjoining armchair so her hosts could sit next to each other. Thomas did so gladly, scooping Vianne’s hand up to his lips for a kiss. Vianne was beginning to wonder if her kindness was a ruse for a devilish debutant lurking beneath. And _a matchmaking one_ at that.

I’m afraid it’s a simple affair for dinner. A soup A roast, and then a sweet, followed by cheese and wine. I hope that’s _not too_ objectionable…” Vianne offers up.

“Sounds perfect.” Jane piped up. “Luckily for me, I escaped my fathers hosting a bridge evening at home. I do love him so dearly, but I haven’t the stamina to keep up shouting to some of his friends, all of whom seem to be completely _deaf_.” Jane told, to much amused laughter rippling throughout the room.

“Are you a bridge champion, Miss Dodson?” Erik asks.

“Oh, hardly. _Vingt-et-un_ is my game.” She tells him. “But my father _won’t_ be moved.” She tells, sipping her port.

“Consider yourself lucky, my dear Jane. My father considers it _a sin_ if anyone can’t hold 20 bore and kill a grouse _cleanly._ A hard feat when one is _eight_ years old and can barely, _lift_ , a gun…” Julian joked. Suddenly, not playing a certain card game seemed _a lot more_ preferable.

“My father hates country sport, _and_ country life.” Jane explained. “He says he likes putting on a scarf and hat, and walking around the corner to his friends polish café and seeing all his old friends gathered around one table in the window. Plus, I think the pastries have something to do with it.” She smiles. “I cant imagine blood sport would be preferable for him.”

“I can understand why, I’m not fond of _blood sport_ myself.” Thomas speaks up.

“When I first came to England, I wondered how on earth such genial people have a hobby that is either dead dull, or involves killing things…” Erik stated.

“You didn’t always grow up in England, Erik?” Thomas asked, as Vianne crossed to the decanter and poured them both a small nip of brandy.

“Indeed not. Erik grew up in a very small village, not far from Strasbourg.” Vianne supplied. “He’s told me the story many times.” She smiles. Coming to sit back down.

“Long, or sad version?” Erik asked Thomas. The man looked crestfallen. Erik smiled with nostalgia.

“Growing up, my family were _as poor as church mice_. So much so that we used to live on a diet of turnips and potatoes. I had three younger brothers, one sister. I was the eldest. But we were so poor, my parents could only afford _one_ pair of shoes for us. And so it was my duty to go out _to work_. My father was a farmer, salt of the earth, humble man, I hardly _ever saw_ him from sunrise to sunset. He was out on the fields working his hands to the bone. I started working in a cottage hospital about sixteen miles from where we lived. Every day since I was 14. I was there. I started as a messenger boy, and by the time I was 26, I was the senior medical assistant. I don’t know _how, or why_ , through hard work, perhaps, but the doctor there gave me a wage and told me to apply and attend the Charité medical school. Finest school in all of Germany. Class of 1873. I graduated in 1878, Then I got on a boat to England, and I _never_ looked back.” He told. The way he spoke

“Why did you _leave_ Germany? And leave your family?” Thomas asked with some trepidation.

Erik met his eyes and crooked a painful smile.

“Because I fell in love. And being, _what I am_ , back then, was unspoken. Unheard of. Vile. _Devils work_ , my father said. And he horsewhipped me for it after I returned home. There were vicious rumours circulating campus about, _my tastes_ , after I turned down a lovely young ladies proposal. She began an _awful rumour_. That rumour grew, and the man whom, I loved, _found out._ He was my good friend. But the hatred he spewed at me when he found out I shall, _never_ , forget.” He explained.

“So I packed my very few things, left my family and envelope full of money on the kitchen table. And sailed for England to find work at The London.” Erik finished. “Sorry to offend _any delicate_ ears..” He winced looking over to Jane. Worried that a gently bred, sheltered young lady would find it disgusting that the man sat across from her was a homosexual.

Jane smiled and shook her head.

“My brother, Barty, is gay. Erik. I’m not scandalised. Have no fear. I _shan’t flee_ from the room in tears..” She explained.

Vianne was floored.

“You have _a brother?”_   Vianne asked Jane, aghast. She’d known Jane since she _was ten_ , and she’d never said _a peep_ about having a brother. “You never told me..” Vianne stated.

“Barty, _well_ , Bartholomew.” She nodded. “He ran away from Harrow when he was 14. My mother and father _never heard a thing_ from him again. His schoolmaster wrote to use and said that he was ‘ _ill in the head’_. We never found what became of him.”

 _“Ill in the head_ , merely _for loving_ members of your same sex.” Vianne muttered sadly. She wondered if propriety would _be cruel, forever_.

“Well put. _Liebling.”_  Erik spoke up to Vianne. She gave him a half sad smile.

“Well. You’ll have to decide what is a crueller punishment. A man loving a man, or a ruined woman. Cause I can assure you, the censure from society feels _roughly equal.”_   She explains with joviality.

“ _Here, here_.” Jane pipes up. Wearily. In a tone that spoke from experience. Thomas must’ve made some sort of expression because this forced Jane to enquire as to why he looked puzzled.

“I thought you were a woman waiting on the perfect marriage match… But now it seems I have made a _false estimation?”_ He asks.

“The reason I am, unmarried and happy to tend to my father, as _the stay-at-home_ spinster daughter, is because I am, what I believe in modern parlance, as _a fallen woman.”_  Thomas regarded her with kind eyes, though his astonishment was still palphable. This demure, kind, sweet girl, whom appeared as every inch a wallflower.

“…He was supposedly the next, _‘Raphael’_.” She began with disdain. “He came and did mine and fathers portrait, just when I turned 21. He told me he’d _found his muse_ in me. Posed me, flattered me, and..” She flushed red with the memory. She averted her gaze, embarrassed she was telling a roomful of people about it. “Once he’d gotten what _he wanted_ , I thought.. well. I had _very feminine_ notions of what was going to happen. We’d settle, have _dozens_ of dark haired children, and I’d be _a bohemian artists_ wife…” She dreamt with bitterness in her voice.

“As it happened, the next week, he slunk off to Italy without so much as a ‘ _by your leave.’_  in search of his _new, divine, inspiration_. And now the portrait sits, unfinished in the attic. As a testament to my _one, stupid_ mistake.” Jane explained. “So now. I am on the shelf, and no self-respecting gentleman will ever wish to marry me.”

Vianne looked sad and genteel, looking across at her friend.

“You _mustn’t think_ like that. There might come a day when you meet _a wonderfu_ l man, who, when he learns of your skeleton in the cupboard, will want you all the same. Secrets and all. _It does happen_ , Jane. Believe me on that.” Thomas smiled wider when she uttered the words _‘scars and all’_   because those were the words _she once spoke_ to him. _Scars, secrets and all._

“Never tell me the name of that blackguard, Jane, or I’ll gladly _hunt him down_ and tear him _to bits_ for the crime of abandoning such a sweet woman as you.” Thomas promises her. She _blushes_ a little as a consequence.

“Unfortunately, no impartial witnesses are here to cast votes in favour of _either_ party.” Julian quips. “ _So, sadly_. Vianne. Jane. I’m just going to have to suggest that you poor, dear women settle for the love of your nearest and dearest and refuse to give a damn about the stupidity _that is_ society nowadays. Fallen woman, or no.” He suggests

“Happy too.” Jane smiles, raising her glass in a toast to Julian. Who saluted back. Winking and smiling at the dear girl.

“Well, then. Might I suggest I just serve dinner, and the wine, and we all be completely _ourselves_ for the next hour and a half, _and sod_ the lot of them.” Vianne asked as she rose to her feet. Her words were met with _three glad_ smiles. Jane stands and helps her bring up the plates, food and wine from the kitchens. Julian carves into the succulent joint of beef. And plates it for everyone. Much wine is enjoyed, aswell as huge heaped plates of roast vegetables and golden roast potatoes. Wine flows, as does laughter and smiles, and there, in the parlour, five people who in their unique ways, found happiness, against all propriety and odds within the safe circle of friends.

Much later in the evening, after dinner ended, and the cheese course gradually dwindles away to port and sherry afters. The music is changed from Nellie Melba, to the sultry Sophie Arnould. And Julian attempts to give Jane a very wobbly Quickstep. Vianne sips a sherry, and Thomas and Erik bond further over their love of single malt Glenfiddich.

 _“Hang propriety_. I’d rather be happy and _cast out_ of society, than in it, and miserable. Waiting for everyone to weight my actions to their approval.” Vianne speaks. As this was an informal dinner party. This is one of the happiest nights she’d treasure over for years.

“Society is toxic.” Erik agreed.

“I, for one, have _had my fill_ of toxic things in my lifetime.” Thomas piped up. Erik turned to look at him then, his face was searching, his expression was sombre.

“My entire family was, _toxic_. I grew up not knowing what was normal and what was _vicious…_ ” Thomas explained.

“Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means, and how its supposed to be, how its supposed to feel. Their parents did unloving things to them, in the name of love. They came to understand love was painful. Confusing, chaotic, confusing and hurtful. Love was something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. And that _is not_ what love is.” Erik explained.

“Love isn’t something that grinds you down, or makes you afraid. It doesn’t create self-hatred, or loathing. Love is the most _nourishing, accepting_ and _wonderful_ thing there is on earth. And I think I speak for everyone in this room, when I say that finding it, and having it, for _however brief_ a time, is _the most_ glorious thing.” He elucidated. And though his speech was short. To Thomas, it was the most powerful, enhancing set of words he’d ever heard. _Hit the nail right on the head, there_.

Thomas looked across to Vianne, who smiles widely. That was everything she needed Thomas to hear. He takes her hand, and folds her close to his body and kisses her hair.

“I’ll be holding onto mine _for as long_ as I can.” Thomas smiles to Erik.

Thomas kisses her forehead, and when Julian and Jane almost topple over an end table. Erik turns to look, and laugh. His heart felt full of admiration and love. And he _knew that was why_ _she was able to forgive him._ His family had supressed and suffocated him for as long as he could remember. He leans close and whispers in Vianne’s ear.

“ _Thank you._ _I needed_ to hear that.” He speaks lowly to her. And he knows she told them he’d been struggling with inner pains and difficulties about his past. And tonight, they’d showed him how each of them in turn, were raging against their demons.

She puts a hand on his chest, and looks lovingly back up at him. Before she snuggles into his chest and he places his hand to curl around their baby.

“We love you, _for you._ Thomas Sharpe.” She smiles, and they laugh together watching Jane and Julian attempt some wild manner of movement that could _almost be construed_ as dancing. _Most dancing didn’t involve nearly knocking frames off the walls_

And they are happy.

Thomas slept peacefully, and deeply, that night, and his demons didn’t even _dare_ stir.

 

~

  


	37. Salt Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Be Yourself - Audioslave

 

~

 

The lecture was going _swimmingly_. Everyone’s interest was piqued as Erik gave his usual lecture, full of _personal insight_ and _knowledge_ as he discussed the complex surgical procedure before them. Vianne was in her usual work garb, shirtwaist and long skirts. Hair pinned in a colonial coiffure, glasses on, _focusing intently,_ and _scribbling_ down what Erik was doing.

 _She was happy._ She’d left for work that morning with a spring in her step to rival a hopping baby lamb. She bought a bunch of peonies from a market vendor. They were a _beautiful blush pink_ shade, and she hummed a _jaunty_  tune as she walked to the hospital. Last nights meal still playing in her head, making her laugh _every now_ and _then_ , thinking of Thomas, Julia and Arthur starting a food fight by _flinging forkfuls_ of peas at each other. In the end, the food war was settled _amicably_ , when they all collapsed onto the settee, in a heap, and Vianne read Beatrix Potter to her _rowdy_ bunch until they all drifted into a _lazy slumber._

Her happiness seemed to be _infectious_.  For when she gets to the receiving room doors, in passing Dr Lawles - a man always known for being a rambunctious lady magnet - grabbed her hand and twirled her around, exclaiming that _“You’re in fine fettle today, Miss James.”._ She laughed, cheeks pinkening as she agreed. _“Indeed I am.”_ Before he spun her away with a smile and she smiled wide all the way to the lecture hall, causing all the probationers to _giggle behind their hands_ at their colleagues antics. Vianne carries on singing even as she gets to hers and Erik’s shared office. He was already at his desk, marking papers, he grins at her, _and joins in_ her song. Bellowing out a merry baritone as she organised her flowers in their vase, and continued her humming.

They carry on, right up until students and the public start to pour into the hall. Even when silence descends and he begins speaking, she still tapped her shoe and smiled merrily to herself. Her smile never fading…

Until Matron opened the door, mid lecture. And _stood_ there, _silent as the grave._

All eyes turned to her, and Erik was forced to pause, her imposing figure, black garb and _stern_ expression taking over the mood of the room. Vianne’s smile dropped. The woman was _glaring_ in her direction with _stern_ intent. It _wouldn't_ have been possible to ignore her, hospital etiquette _demanded otherwise._

The groaning wood of the door loudly announced her presence also. Her manifestation _was not to be missed_. Erik sighed slightly before addressing her, he couldn’t continue until he addressed her, as was, _no doubt_ , her aim.

“May _I be of use,_ Miss Davis?” He asks her, peering up through his spectacles, his gloved hands held aloft, pausing for her. His terse tone said more. _‘I am in the middle of a lecture, must you disturb me for whatever triviality you desire?_ ’ it seemed to say.

“I need _a word_ with Miss James. _Now._ ” She demands. Barking her words. Glaring, before turning on her heel, gathering her skirts and expecting Vianne to follow suit.

Her smile had _definitely dissipated_ now. As her _previously sunny_ mood. Doused quicker than a shower of icy rain. She stood on weak feeling legs. She turns and deposits her notebook and ink pen on her modest wooden chair, when she turns back, she rubs her _clammy_ hands on her skirts and heads for the stairs.

Uncomfortably aware _all eyes_ in the room were watching her now, making her cheeks _red_ with the _unwanted_ attention, even though Erik had resumed his talk, they all seemed to _prefer_ watching _her._

She walks up the centre stairs, steps creaking with every step. Her heart _hammered panic_ through her veins. She feels _feverish_ , and though she had not suffered a bout of morning sickness this morning, she rather felt like _suffering it now_ _instead_. She wanted to empty her breakfast onto the polished tiled floor.

Her throat feels _lodged full of pebbles_ , like she’d swallowed an _entire section_ of Brighton beach. She hesitantly comes to the door, and pushes it open, slowly stepping the other side. With a _trembling_ hand, she shuts it, looking up she peers down the corridor to see the frightening black _ghoul_ of matron awaiting her in the distance. Stance _angry_ , hands crossed, a _dreadful_ expression pursing her lips, narrowing her eyes in a scowl of _the foulest kind_.

She walks in _silence_ , every step she took echoed in her ears. By the time they got to Matrons office, her ears are _ringing_ , with her blood gonging and her terrified heartbeat is _all_ she can hear.

She tries to tell herself it was something trivial. But _the pure hatred_ in the elder woman’s eyes as she sits behind her desk, and folds her hands, tells her realistic brain that it _was kidding itself._

Vianne shuts the door behind her, _as instructed per Matrons bark_ , and gingerly takes a seat. As soon as her body touches the seat, her hands begin to tremble in _fear. Fear of what she knew was doubtless coming next…_

“You can be under _no illusions_ as to _why_ I’ve summoned you.” Matron _spits_ at her. It takes everything, _every spec of bravery_ , Vianne has in her body, to raise her head, and meet the imposing  frown of revulsion that was being sent her way beyond the desk. She deigns to stay silent, words were _beyond her_ right now.

“In all my thirty years of being here, I have _never met_ a bigger _disgrace_ to the _sacred_ profession of nursing.” She begins. Every word lands like a blow. Hitting her like a slap. She swallows and wills her eyes not to water.

“Do you think you could _hide your filthy_ secret from us forever?” She asks with a sneer. She reaches for her desk drawer, opens it, takes out a yellowed piece of paper, and then _slams_ in down to the desk before Vianne, so she could see it.

“I count myself lucky that Sister Marjorie has an extensive interest in flora and fauna, in her collecting old newspapers to wrap her clematis bulbs in for spring. she stumbled across this _, shocking,_ article yesterday. She marched it straight to me for consumption and _I’ve never_ been more _horrified and insulted_ in my life.” She bites out.

She didn’t need to raise her eyes to it. She saw the top of the paper ‘ _Scottish Herald’_ dated _two years_ ago, 1907. Announcing _the marriage_ of baronet Thomas Sharpe, to Heiress of London, Vianne Earnest-James. Married at St. Johns chapel in Gretna Green on the 14 th October. Attended by three guests.

“I _don’t need_ to convey to you the _depths of my disgust_ , now _do I?”_ Matron asks her. Vianne swallows, shaking her head. She tried, _so hard,_ to fight it, but she swiped the back of her hand quickly across her cheek to catch the stray tear that fell. _Now, she definitely wanted to be sick._

“ _No,_ Matron.” Vianne obeys in a mousy voice. Her voice barely a whisper, full of a choked, broken timbre that was full of _shame, upset, and regret_. She had a canny feeling she was about to be _slashed_ to aching ribbons by her superior.

“… I cannot believe I ever let such _a harlot_ walk among my nurses. _Divorced. Siring fatherless bastards…”_  She hisses.

Vianne _does_ meet her eyes then. Her blood fired _hot._ She could slander her character all she desired, but at her less than polite insinuation as to her children, she wants to rake her nails down the crones face. It was the dwelling life inside her that made her stupidly overprotective. _God help you, you may speak against my wrongs, but don’t you dare offend my children._

She clenches her jaw, so as not _to spit hatred back at the woman_. That would do her _no favours, here. Not now._

 _“I don’t care_ how good your record is as a combat nurse, had I _my way_ , you’d be stripped of your medals and _every title_ you own that you _don’t deserve_. When I think of all that women have sacrificed before you, to be _where you are,_ today. To Nurse…” She scoffs. “ You are nothing but a _selfish_ , _waste_ of _uniform_ and _skin_ , _to me._ ” She insists.

Vianne’s throat was closing up. _It felt like both sides were growing together, closing shut_   She _knew_ she was dismissed. But she was sure _such nastiness and poison_ from her quarter, wasn’t _entirely_ necessary.

“I will make sure you _never step foot_ in another hospital whilst you _live_ and _breathe_.” She states determinedly. Another tear drops at that. She swallows and meets the woman’s cold, dead eyes.

“Do you wish me to _work out_ my notice?” She manages to breathe, in a voice so broken she was amazed she formed words at all. _Though she feared she already knew Matrons stance on that offer…_

The woman _glared_ harder, _if that were possible._

“I will not have _my_ hospital wards further _contaminated_ with the _likes of you.”_  She sniffs with disdain. “You are henceforth _dismissed without_ a reference, and _without a_ character. You _shall never nurse again_ , and _good riddance_ on you. Now get _out of my sight_. If you are seen on hospital premises again I shall call the police, to have you thrown in a _gaol to rot_.” She barks out.

Vianne stands on shaking legs, and rounds the back of her chair. Her entire body pauses when she hears Matron add a sentence under her breath. _Though it was cruelly designed to be heard._

 _“Where you should be, in my righteous opinion.”_ She has the _nerve_ to wound her with.

She turns to her, eyes watering, breath shaking, so _angry_ and _sad_ , and _upset_ she was physically _shaking_.

“If I were _any other woman_ , I would _have knocked you down_ for the _vicious things you’ve said to me_. And now I am _no longer_ under your employ, I can finally get something _off my chest_ , Miss Davis…” Vianne barks back at her, her voice reedy, thin, but ultimately calm in her anger.

“… _I’d do it all again had I the choice over._ Because I _am not ashamed_ , as you are, to have a _loving_ partner, and have _three beautiful, wonderful_ , children with the man I _love_.” She spits back at the woman, with tears clouding her eyes. Her hands gripped the back of her chair _so tight_ , her nails _dug into_ the wood.

“Rumour reached me it was _only two_ bastards…” Matron supposed. Looking her up and down with hatred.

“ _For now_ , that gossip is correct.” Vianne sneers, placing one hand low on her abdomen.

The old dragons eyes looked down and she looked as if she had just tasted _something sourer than off milk._

She watches Matrons nostrils flare angrily, - _and in a manner most ugly too_ \- as she rises to her feet, grasps her bible and shakes it in Vianne’s direction as if to _cleanse_ her of her sins, _merely_ by that action alone.

 _“Get out!”_ She shouts. _“No one_ who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies _shall continue_ before _my eyes._ _Psalm. 101, verse 7”_  She plants her hands on the desk and taps her bible viciously. Proving her point. Casting her out.

Vianne grabs the chair harder, leans forwards and snarls back at the woman, _nastier_ , just as loudly.

“For if you forgive other people when _they sin against you_ , your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive other their sins, _he shall not_ forgive _you, yours_.” She shouts back. The words scraping through her throat. She lowers her tone and adds;

“Matthew, 6. Verses 14 and 15…” Vianne growls lowly. She storms around the desk, her rage firing on all cylinders. Matron slunk back, horrified.

Vianne _snatches_ the bible into her grip and shoves it in the elder woman’s face angrily. Holding it aloft. Her eyes _ablaze_ with wild vitriol. She shook her head as Vianne spoke. Which only forced her to _shout louder_ , to better force her words into her.

“Get rid _of all_ bitterness, rage and anger, brawling _and slander_ , along with every form of _malice. Be kind_ and _compassionate_ to one another, _forgiving_ each other, just as in Christ God _forgave you._ Ephesians 4, 31” She exclaims. Still holding the bible.

“This is a book which _is only_ filled with _love, forgiveness, compassion,_ and _kindness._ Yet you prefer only to seek it out to favour your _petty, cruel,_ judgement and _meanness_.” Vianne spits the _now scared_ looking woman. _Slamming_ the bible back down on her desk, disturbing her papers, and shattering an inkpot, but she _didn’t care._ She soldiered on, as her truthful words _scraped_ through her aching throat.

“I may have gone against _your precious_ standing orders, and I realise _that is all_ you care about, but casting me out as if I were the _whore of Babylon_ is beyond the pale, even for a twisted, bitter old crone such as you...” She snaps lowly, but she _wasn’t done yet._

“You have _insulted_ me in every _possible_ manner, and whilst I take great relief that I will _never have_ to slave on a ward under your command again, you should realise that I worked my fingers _bloody_ _to the bone_ for this hospital and I have patiently devoted _11_ _years_ of my life to this place, and for you to overlook _all that_  as if it doesn’t matter, says to me your hatred of me must be of _more than my sinning_ against your orders.” She intones.

“You’ve _never_ made _light_ of your disdain for me, Miss Davis, but allow me to say I _hope_ you _can one day_ find a shred of forgiveness in your _dead_ heart, maybe then you will realise that a woman _is more_ than just a nurse and a blank sheet of paper, as _I am_. And proud to be. Imperfect, and _real_. And now, more than glad to be _rid of you and your judgement, you frightful old hag_.” She snaps, she rounds the desk and intends to storm out of the door, and away from this _godforsaken_ row.

She would have, but Erik _storming in_ the door, _rather cut off_ all plans of her hasty retreat…

His eyes drifted from Vianne, to Matron, who was huddled behind her desk. She didn’t doubt others nearby would have heard their shouting. _They had wailed like banshees…_ He was still dressed in his blood spattered surgical gown, and white cap. His gloves he’d divested of, he’d walked out in the middle of his lecture to follow her here, and see what was occurring in these office walls

“Dr. Harriden…” Matron huffed. Righting her flustered, angry state. Already making the – _presumptuous_ \- mistake that Erik would be on _her side_.

“Your, _assistant…”_ She spat the word in as a demeaning manner as was possible.

“…Had just been _relieved_ of her post. I will give her _no character, and no reference_ or kind word. For her actions are _most ungodly_ , I shall shield you from their evil. She had _lied, and tricked_ her way into her position as a nurse, and _I hope you’ll agree_ , this hospital will be _a better place_ without _her_ ….” She shrilled.

He looked straight to Vianne. Who met his gaze with a tear filled one. She swallowed, and looked forlornly to her feet.

Erik scoffed. And Matrons face fell. He angrily shrugged off his gown, and tore away his hat. He threw them in a pile onto the chair opposite her own.

“I am _more than happy_ to _disagree_ with you.” He speaks to the woman. His voice was _so angry_ , Vianne had never heard the like. Not from someone as genial as him.

 _Her heart swells_.

She starts forwards and cups his hand, she shakes her head, _pleading_ for him not to continue _. They can’t both lose their jobs in one day_. Not him too.

Erik _stoutly ignored_ her _. Bless this man’s very good, too-big heart,_ she thinks.

“Do you _have a brain_ in that _senseless old_ skull of yours?” He asks Matron, his eyes narrowing incredulously.

Vianne drops her head. Trying not to laugh. Biting her lip with all her might. _She didn’t care that he favoured men, she wanted to kiss him for this defence…_

Matrons mouth dropped in _shock_ and _disgust_. “How _dare you speak_ to _me_ lik-“ She began. He cut her words off, _stone dead._

“I will speak to you in a manner _fit_ to reflect your _own foul_ words and _behaviour._ You don’t _command me_ , or my actions, I am _a doctor_ … not one of your _quivering nurses_ …” Erik raised his voice at her.

Where he had slammed open the office door, he _had not_ shut it again in his wake. And outside in the hallway beyond, Vianne could hear gasps, and people crowding closer, their footfalls _nearing, to listen_ in. _Not that one had to listen very hard…_

“If you had the capacity to carry _one ounce_ of _sensibility_ and _compassion_ in that _miserable strict_ body, you _would admit to this woman_ that she is one of _the finest nurses_ to step through the threshold of this godforsaken place. She has devoted half her _life_ to your employ. She has given up _her own time_ to do the shifts that _no one wanted._ She has done the _lowliest, vile_ , jobs that no one else would _even think_ of encountering or _lowering_ themselves too. On top of her work on the wards, she _has slaved_ the equivalent of _the twelve labours of Hercules_ for my classes to cram her head _so full_ of knowledge, to be able to pass her exams _and qualify_ for her place here. Yet for want of one _shred_ of propriety and sordid gossip into her character, you’d dismiss one _of the best_ medical practitioners that you don’t have the _stupid sense_ to recognise?” He asks her, not requiring an answer.

“You are a _blind, fool_.” He snaps lowly to her. Her face steeled harder. _Vianne had a feeling this was the first time anyone had spoken to her in this way._

“I’ve never _cared much_ for your prickly judgements. I’ve made no secret of it. But for your small mindedness to go so far as to dismiss this nurse, it makes me realise I don’t want to continue at this hospital _either._ Nor do I wish to work with such _vile mouthed bigots_ as you.” He speaks in such a low voice, the foulness of his tone, made her skin crawl. She never wanted to see this side of Erik so long as she lived. _It was terrifying_ to encounter.

“Seeings as you’re so intent on dismissing Vianne. You can have _my_ resignation _also_.” Erik insists. Chucking off his stethoscope. And walking to place it firmly down on her desk. The slamming noise made her _flinch._

Matron’s mouth gaped. She wasn’t counting on the _‘whore of Babylon’_ having such influential friends as _their best_ medical lecturer. And oldest resident doctor. Beloved by all, feared by most, showing such solidarity as to leave his post to accompany his lowly _medical assistant_ into dismissal.

“You may _rest assured_ I _will_ be writing our chairman, Sidney Holland, who is a _great personal friend_ , with explicit detail as _to why_ I took the initiative to leave my post when he enquires as to my release from this hospitals payroll. _Now_ , there is little else left to say, except that you may have my most _sincere wishes_ that you take a very _long walk_ off a very _short cliff_. _Good day_ to you, Miss Davies, _I can’t_ say it has been _pleasant_ knowing you.” He grins shortly. His temper still flaring.

It the _utmost_ show of disrespect, he _turns his back_ on the woman. Marched to Vianne, and offered her his arm.

"Crown and Anchor? I daresay after I _calm down_ , I shall be needing a stiff drink or two to celebrate my liberation from _this place_ … _and certain people_ ” He asks her. Mocking her superior in their detriment.

She nods, gladly accepting. She slides her hand into the crook of his elbow and together they march out of Matrons office, and down the corridor, past all the shocked faces that couldn’t help but _gawp_ at them.

Erik met their stares head on. He smiled. Bid them _good afternoon_. And _goodbye_.

They are stopped by Doctor Fenwick. A surgeon. Who Erik clapped hands with, and shook firmly. Fenwick seemed sorry, he shook his head in a daze. Doubtless the gossip was _all over_ _every ward_ by now.

“ _Good luck_ to you. Old chap.” He harrumphs in his foghorn, cut glass voice. He then turns to Vianne.

“You’re a brave girl, My dear. I wish you every joy. You will be sorely missed as a nurse, I can _safely guarantee_ that.” He tells her. Shaking her hand also.

 _“Pleasure_ to have worked alongside you. Dr. Fenwick.” Vianne tells him. He bowed his head to her for that compliment. He lets them pass and more and more people turn, and _bask in admiration_ of the walking couple.

Erik Harriden and Vianne James, had, between them, done _two_ things that nobody in this hospital had _ever done_. _The first_ , being silencing matron into speechlessness. _The second_ , standing up to the woman.

They got halfway down the hall when Vianne’s brain returned from its rage.

“You didn’t have _to do that_ for me, Erik. _Show solidarity_ like that. I _did g_ o against my standing orders…” She begins.

 _Her rationality in all it’s polite worry was returning,_ he could tell.

He silences her with a look. His head sloped to look her in the eye, his bitterness had gone, there was left her warm hearted, warm eyed friend now. The man she recognised. Because that frightful creature _who’d raged_ against Matron _she’d never_ have come to recognise as him unless she saw him do so, with _her own_ two eyes.

“But that doesn’t make you _a bad nurse_ …” He grins gently. “ _That doesn’t_ make you deserving of all the screeching, awful names, I heard her shouting to you as I made my way down that corridor. _Nor does_ it give her the right to _bully you so._ ” He explains.

“I heard _that witch_ call _my godchildren, bastards_. I heard her slander you as _a whore_ , just because you are _married._ I don’t want to _be near, let alone work for_ , a woman who can _spit_ those _richly undeserved_ words and such hatred at another human being.” He tells her simply.

“And if the old crone _is dead set_ on dismissing you. I’ll be damned if I lose _the best assistant_ , and _friend,_ I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. Because I’ll tell you this now, were it not for seeing your _sweet smile_ each day, I’d have quit my post _long ago.”_  He informs her. Cupping the back of her hand, covering it with his and patting her comfortingly.

“And I will be demanding references and characters from Sidney. He owes me a favour. And he’ll hit the roof to know Matron had to the gall to _dismiss us both.”_

“You resigned…” Vianne points out.

His face looked _wicked_.

“My letter will…. _mmmm, embellish, somewhat,_ over my departure _. It’s about_ time that _old hag_ had her comeuppance…” He offers simply. With a wink.

With no further ado, as they’d come to the anatomy lecture hall, he threw open the doors and walked down the stairs, bold as brass. Smiling away as if he hadn’t just quit his job.

“Damen and Herren, I am, _not,_ very sorry to announce, But I have just _quit my post_ as teacher and doctor… So if you could now please all, _get out,_ I have my measly belongings to pack up in my office…And I’m now going to go to the pub, where I heartily intend to _drink my entire body weight_ in gin.” The man practically _sang,_ as he _skipped across_ to his office as merry as a spring lamb.

There were gasps and murmurs as people gathered their things, _outraged_ , and _flabbergasted_ at his display.

A cluster of medical students looked both _outraged_ and _offended_ by his outburst. Especially as Mr Vaughn - _his not so favourite student –_ stormed to the man and declared this was _unprofessional_ , _rude_ and that his father on the _trustees board_ would be hearing about this episode.

Erik tilted his head at the snobby boy. He smiled and clapped him on the shoulder, _smiling_ at his _acerbic_ face.

“You may tell your _stuck up_ father whatever _the hell_ you like. Vaughn.” Erik dismisses.

“I don’t have to take any more _sniping_ comments from you. Or _threats_. Seeings as I am now _not under_ the employ of all the snobs you are friends with. _Oh,_ and my _parting advice_ in passing to you…” He begins, smiling handsomely.

“Is that, _unfortunately,_ as you are far _too stupid,_ and _lazy_ , to be a doctor, you might consider a career in  _philosoph_ y or something equally as _insipid_ and _useless_ as a profession…” He insults "God, I’ve wanted to say that _for weeks._..." He laughs to himself, smiling and sauntering away to his office. Leaving Vaughn red faced in anger and embarrassment, and surrounded by ripples of gasps and laughter through the crowds.

Vianne smothered her laugh into her hand, wishing she had half of Erik’s courage. _And_ his _lucky capability_ to drown herself in spirits when they got to the pub...

 

~

 

 


	38. I am Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Mood; Chainsmoking - Jacob Banks

 

~

 

Pelting rain started to pour by the time they depart the pub. Erik had downed _pint_ after _pint_. Vianne started to wonder if it wasn’t _in celebration_ , but rather for the purpose of him hoping _to forget_. The pounding head she wagered he’d wake up with tomorrow would also be _enough_ of a punishment on his senses.

Horrible, grey guilt started to _ebb in_ , and gnaw at her stomach. She did feel sick as she sat and nursed her berry fruit cordial. It _cloyed_ in her mouth, and left her teeth feeling _fuzzy_ with it’s sickening sweetness. Worries and shame started to swirl around in her head faster than she could keep up. _If she’d just accepted Matron’s hurtful remarks with silence, and cowered from the room, maybe she could have saved Erik his job._ She begins to feel _the shame_ of her actions creep up on her.

 _Of course she didn’t deserve to nurse, when she thought of what all other women had given up to take the profession…_ and there she was. _A Traitor_. _Judas._ A disgrace on her own sex. Swanning in, playing the _quiet mouse_ , thinking she could keep her family, _her marriage_ , _her loved ones_ , a secret from her colleagues. Women were not permitted to have everything.  That was a _brazenly evident_ fact. And today, she’d felt _the full force_ of her punishment for _daring_ to hope she could have a little _more_ than what she was allowed.

She didn’t _deserve_ to keep a job she _so enjoyed_ … She was a fool to believe she could. A _sinful spectacle_ of womanhood. Moreover, she’d miss the routine of it. She’d miss grateful patients smiles. She’d miss her comrades, and nursing sisters-in-arms. She couldn’t _bare_ to feel that they’d _scorn_ and _hate_ her now. They’d _all given up_ wanting to be _wives,_ and their hopes of finding _love._ And she had _inconsiderately_ kept hers. She didn’t like to think what would be said about her, in her wake.

She _still_ felt sick. She felt like a giant bubble of contained tears and sobs. One stab with a pin to her frail shell, and _she’d burst_ into incoherent hysteria. And the fact that Erik ‘s job had been _collateral damage_ in the wake of her dismissal, leaves such _a pit_ of guilt in her stomach, she doesn’t know how to _even begin_ cleansing herself of it.

Her head was elsewhere, and when she softly admits it time she was getting home. He agrees. They stand to pull on their coats. Vianne felt like she was going before a _firing squad_ in going home to break the news. Atleast Erik had the _fall-back_ of having some _Dutch courage_ under his belt before he headed home to Julian. _She had nothing._

_Nothing but her awful truth._

They exit the pub into the showering sheets of  rain. A harsh slap in the face to summon her from her thought filled daze. When she tilts her head down to get into the cab he’d summoned them, _she squirms_ , when it sneaks in and trickles down her neck, down into her - _superfluous -_ work uniform. She felt the sneaking droplets send a shiver, coolly down her spine. She says nothing as the London streets pass by in a _grey blur_ of showering rain and dismal mood. She watched for street after street, as people turned their collars up, and donned their hats and scurried away from the _foul_ weather that _spat_ down on them. When the hackney cab slows, the horses hooves slowing pace to a trot, she jolts when she realises she was home, already.

She sits, nervously, listening to the rain beat its macabre drumroll on the cab roof. She finds that her body _doesn’t want_ to move. She is _fused_ to the cabs seat, and she has it in her mind that tearing away _will hurt_ , as if it would leave a layer of _her skin_ behind. Erik senses her frail tension, and lays his hand over hers. He says nothing. Which was wise. But his eyes, they simply _glowed_.

They glowed warm, with the comforting promise that everything would _be alright_.

She drew in a shuddering breath and then she slips out of her seat, and lowers her feet to the ground. It was just her luck for today being the hellish siege on her, that it was, her feet, and heavy wool hem, landed _squarely_ in a puddle of muddy water.

She felt it invade through the cracks in her worn shoes. She felt her stockings _squelch_ in her boots when she moved her toes. With a heaving sigh, before she let more tears have free range down her cheeks, she snatches her skirts, and heaves them up a fraction, twisting her body a little to shake the water off. Which was superfluous. She couldn’t get _much wetter,_ stood as she was in the rain. It was _under_ her collar, _soaking_ her feet, _numbing_ her hands. Starting to seep into her bones and chill her.

She strides quickly across the road, and fights to open her door. Her hands are _too cold_ and shaking _far too_ violently. She has to _wrench_ a lot for her palm to get a grip, she curses _and twists_ her wrist, feeling hot tears _jab_ at the corner of her eyes again. With gritted teeth she finally manages to unlatch the door, gently pushing it open, slipping in with her gaze lowered to the floor.

She realises her dishevelled, cold, soggy state when in comparison to the soothing warmth of her home. The fires and lamps are lit, making the space cosy in comparison to the dark, foggy grey outside. And the scent of tonight’s dinner is already lingering in the air. Gliding up the kitchen stairs, the aroma of butter and pastry making her mouth water. And there are sounds too, she can hear Thomas’s laugh, aswell as Julia’s. And Arthur clamours loudly too.

She steps in her house with a leaden heart, and shuts her door after her. It closes with a _dense clunk_. Announcing her arrival.

 _Announcing her failure, too._ She thinks.

Because she knows she has _but seconds_ , until Thomas rounded that door and saw her, and would enquire as to what was wrong. _The first_ _kind word_ _from him_ , _she knows, will_ _shatter her_ to _pieces._

She can hear him roar in effort as he, _probably no doubt_ , heaves one twin up into his hold. Snatching them up from whatever game he was entertaining them with. Into the cradle of his _safe arms_ , _high_ off the ground _for them_ , ensconced up, in the towering, tall, pillar of man that he was.

“Should _we go and see_ who that _is?_ ” He asks the children. His voice _sounds like a smile_.

She un pins her, soggy and drooping hat, and nervously wrings the brim of it in her quivering hands. The heat started to make her limbs feel fuzzy. _Needling, prickling_ , back into life. Back into feeling. She could hear his footsteps, and one of her child’s, tread, gentle, on the thick carpet.

She watched them, _her little family_ , round the doorframe. Thomas had Julia on his hip, and Arthur was straining along, holding his arm, like a seeking dog pulling on its lead. They’re all smiling and contented, and she wished, _god did she wish,_ she could be as happy as they were. Thomas had to half stoop to continue holding Arthurs hand.

“We didn’t expect you home _so soon_..” Thomas smiles gleefully, his eyes on Arthur. But when he raises that handsome face to gaze over at her, his _smile drops_.

 _I must look as frightening as I feel_ , Vianne ponders.

His heart began to seal over, _hardening,_ starting to quake with confusion, rage and curiosity. His lover was soaked _nearly to the bone_. Loose wisps of her hair were stuck in thick, wet curls to her neck and cheeks. She was paler than a porcelain doll, save for her _blotching_ cheeks from her hysteria, and _red raw_ eyes. Red from the _numerous times_ she’s swiped tears away, or rubbed a knuckle into her orbit until she saw stars. Her eyes were glassy, steel blue with unshed tears. Her clothes looked wet to the touch, and her hem is wet, almost up to _her ankles_. He can’t tell if the droplets dripping down her colourless face is _tears, or rain_.

She was thankful Thomas _snaps_ into action, because she _felt frozen_ to the spot where he _very cold feet_ were keeping her rooted.

“Jeanie.” Thomas calls sharply down to the kitchen, He gently lowers Julia to the floor, crouching to his knees afore her, kisses her head, and when her big doe eyes blink up at him, he gently kisses her hand and strokes over her hair, ending with tucking his fingers under her chin. Arthur he tucks in a hold, and kisses his forehead.

“We’ll carry on playing later…” He promises.

“Why don’t you and Arthur go and make some scones with Jeanie _, poppet?_  Gonk has to _see to_ Mama...”

Their frazzled maid appears in the doorway of the kitchen stairs, her brows pulled too with apprehension she’d done something wrong with the snapping nature of Thomas’s summon. Her cheeks are red with exertion, her apron on, and sleeves rolled. No doubt she was just helping Mrs. B with dinner. She looks bewildered, until she see’s Vianne, and then _she understands_ _his tumult._  She nods, smiling a comforting grin to the children, as she whisks them quickly away downstairs. 

“You have my _full permission_ to spoil them with jam and white Bread, Jeanie. _They love that_...” He speaks after her. That was their _once-in-a-blue-moon_   allowed treat. Or if they had a _particularly strong_ crying episode, to cheer them up and coerce a smile. Jeanie gives a hearty nod in understanding. _Keep them occupied, and distracted…_

After he speaks, he twists around and stalks _right_ to her. “ _My god, what_ happened?” He asks, as he comes to her. His hands reach out to touch her shoulders, and his palms feel _how soaked_ she was.

“ _What is it?_ Are you _hurt?_ Were _you attacked_ , Vianne?” He asks, his eyes searching her, all over, looking for blood, bruises, mussed clothes. Any signifier that gave away as to why she was half drowned, and _raw_ from tears.

She waves away his questions. She sighs, _Not, physically, attacked anyway._

“ _No_. I..” She starts to breathe, but then it feels as if her heart was in someone’s palm, and they _were crushing it tight_. _Tighter and tighter_. She couldn’t _breathe. Or speak_. Her throat is _clogged_ with cloying panic.

Her lip trembles, and her face crumples, and screws up _in agony_ , more tears are _soon_ to follow. It felt as if something poisonous was clouding up her lungs.

A _sob bursts_ out of her, sputtering out of her, she clasps a hand to her mouth and sways unsteadily on her feet. _The shock was finally ploughing into her with full, immobilising force._

He is around her then. _He is all she knows_. All she can feel. Uncaring that she was covered head to toe, in a sodden wool overcoat. He hugged _tigh_ t. She collapses into his chest, as his arms surround her, as does _his_ scent _, his_ warmth _. His comfort._

When his mouth lowers to her hair, nestling there, he inhales, expecting to find the familiarity of French perfume and soap, as it _so often was_ , _woven_ onto her hair. Yet _instead,_ he can smell stale tobacco, and ale lingering on her.

She stabilises herself. When all she wants to do _is screw_ her eyes shut tight and hibernate in his arms, against his ribcage, _truth will out, as they say._

She reluctantly pulls away, and she forces herself, _weakly,_ to meet his eyes. She felt _about as strong_ as a scorched matchstick.

“I was _dismissed_.” She manages to gasp out, her voice is the barest hint of its usual self.

His brow furrows, and he tilts his head down at her. Shaking his head not long thereafter.

“How can _that be?”_   He seeks “You’re the _best nurse_ in that _entire_ place.” He adds.

“Matron _knows_.” She explains ominously. “She _found out.”_  He looks both annoyed, _and_ overwhelmed.

“She found a newspaper clipping of the announcement of _our marriage_ in the Scottish Herald…” She sighs. Sniffling.

Guilt rots at his heart. _He’d posted that very announcement, oddly enough, in sheer joy that she’d agreed to accept his hand in marriage. How could he have known something that signalled his elation, would one day be the source of her pain?_

“ _Oh,_ my love. I’m a fool…” He chides, stroking her cold cheek.

She disagreed, shaking her head.

“I was the one to have that article sent to print… I should’ve thought to look for, _evidence._ ” He chides himself as he rubs her arms, trying to warm her up.

“We couldn’t have known. If there’s blame _to be placed_ , the fault _is entirely mine_. I tried to… I thought _I, could_ …” She sighs, trailing off.

Her fingers begin to stumble over her coat buttons. _Her teeth would be chattering soon if she doesn’t dry off._ He senses this, as he bats her hands away and sharply undoes every button with his warm, adroit fingers. That _weren’t numbed_ by _cold, shock_ and _rain._

“ _Here…_ ” He offers, as he steps behind her and helps her out of her sodden coat. But clearly more was needed, it had seeped through to her clothes. Her white shirt clung to her arms, almost transparent in places. Thomas sweeps one look across her state, and he sighs, as he chides her with two short words;

“Bath. _Now._ ” He tells her.

She accepts with a weary nod.

He leads her to the stairs and sits her down on the third step, he crouches in front of her and reaches under her skirts and petticoats to find her leg, he brings one up, and starts to fight with the laces of her boots. Wordlessly, she watches him, rubbing more tears out of her eyes. He finished with one leg, and reached for the other. When both muddied, cracked pairs of boot sits by the coatrack, he reaches under again, and his fingers slide up her thigh, hook into her soggy stockings, unclip them swiftly, and roll those too, down and off her legs. _Her feet were like ice._ He places the soggy things atop her shoes, and turns back to her.

She was looking forlornly down into her lap, she looked _miserable_. And more tears gently sprang from her eyes. Slowly cresting over her soft, blotchy cheeks.

He reaches for her hands, joined morosely in her lap, and slides his fingers through hers. She raises her eyes, her lashes brimmed with beading tears, and looks down at him as he knelt before her. He shifted to one side and brought out his pocket square, whilst his other hand stayed clasped to hers. His thumb rubbing a _slow, gentle_ circle on the back of her hand.

He reaches over and slowly drags the cloth over her escaped tears. She closes her eyes, and tries to swallow down the sour lump of grief in her throat.

“I was _so foolish.”_  She finally rasps out in a voice _so_ gentle, it was _barely legible_. As more tears roll.

He shuffles closer, both hands slide to clasp her back, holding her. Stroking down over her lower back, just above her hips.

“I doubt that, _very, very, much_.” He softly compliments with a fierce growl, meaning his words. Brushing a stuck coil of hair from in front of her ear, off her jaw, he leans in close and presses a warm kiss to her cheek. His forehead nudges into hers and his body language simply says _one, heart-warming_ _thing_ , to her;

 _‘I’m Here_.’

When his lips pressed to her skin, he is _not_ surprised to find that she is clammy and cold. _Cold as ice_.

“Upstairs. Before your lips _turn blue_ …” He encourages sternly, he rises to his feet, and tugs her with him.

He leads her to the bedroom, and helps divest her of her clothes. He sits her on the bed, and begins to peel off her clothes. He unbuttons her waistcoat, and then her tie he gently un-knots, with careful fingers finding the tied fabric. He detaches her collar, and then carefully undoes each button of her blouse. Then he finds the fastener on her skirt, and that too comes away. Then she is down to petticoats. Laced, ruffled and trimmed with expensive lace. He loops that down and off her arms. This leaves her in her s-shaped, over the hip corset, for he’d already unclipped her stockings. He motions for her to stand, and he then patiently takes out _every_ hairclip from her thick, wet locks. He slides out pin, after pin, patiently, until her coiffure is down around her shoulders, in sodden red strands.

Her hair looked darker when it was wet, he notices. It took on an almost dark brown quality to it. She tucks a great portion of it behind one ear. He covers her shoulders in a towel. She hugs it around her, tight, for _goosebumps_ were already raising up on her pale skin, needling every hair to stand on her arms and legs. She feels him press a kiss into her wet hair from behind, his hands on her waist. He had to _act quick_. _She was almost trembling with cold._

“I’ll run your bath, then _help you_ with he rest.” He insists. She can do naught, _but nod_. She suddenly felt tired, and sapped of every ounce of her energy. He flits away into the en-suite and leaves her, sat in a _small, miserable heap_ on the bed. The wreckage of her wet clothes surrounding her. Littered to the floor. She didn’t even possess _the energy_ to reach down and tidy them. _That wasn’t like her, not at all._

Thomas spies on her from the ajar bathroom door. _She was in a bad way. The worst he’d seen for two years._  She was reticent, quiet, and he knows without a shadow of a doubt, that this dismissal will have brought her _usually_ jubilant spirits, _so very_ _low_.

He turns back to the bath, he’d filled it almost to the brim, steaming full, clouding the room with heat. He opens the door and beckons her inside.

In _no time_ at all, and with careful, loving hands, he strips the rest of her clothes from her body. Corset, drawers and chemise all left in a heap on the tiled floor. She drops into the scorching hot water and throws herself below the surface, wetting her damp hair. She lets the heat sting at her every cell. Chasing away the biting cold.

He leaves her alone in the bath for a few moments. He collects all her sodden clothes and places them on the rail by the fire to dry them out. Her boots he wagered she’d need a new pair of, her current brown things were cracked and battered almost into oblivion. _Dirt was currently the only molecules stringing the things together._

He returns above stairs, holding the brandy decanter and a small sherry glass in his hands. He shuts their bedroom door, and makes quick strides across to the ensuite. He slips in the door, seeing she was sat in the water, her arms curled around her knees, brought up to her chest. Her hair was a dark, sticky, curtain of bronze that clung, pasting, to her shoulders, and down her back.

He watches her raw, sorrowful, red eyes switch to him as he entered, and placed a small glass of her favourite brandy down on the stool, and pulled it within her reach.

“I _won’t tell.”_ He says, as he smiles, and began to unbutton his waistcoat. She manages a weak smile, and sips it back, feeling its heat soften her insides. _He’d pour her another one later for good measure_. She turns her eyes back to him, and she sees he is down to his braces and white shirt, he was currently rolling the sleeves. He turns and places his vest on the hook behind him, then comes close, and plonks himself down, on the floor, level with her eyeline. Outside of the bath.

“Now, are you going to tell me more of _what happened?_ Or am I going to have to _torture_ the information _from you?”_ He asks her softly. He reached for a strand of her hair and shifted it off her face. Admiring her with a tilt of his head.

“ _Torture_ me?” She enquires with drawn brows. He draws her dripping hand out from the water to press a kiss to it.

“My kind of torture involves a great deal of _kissing, hugging_ , and _plying_ you with more snifters of brandy for the rest of our evening…” He explains. He extends his arm across her and grabs the sponge from the side, he shifts onto his knees, and squeezes it to bring more warm water down across her bowed back. He chuckles softly.

“You know in medieval times, it was considered a _woman’s wifely duty_ , to ensure she bathed her husband…” He smiles, smoothing the sponge down her upper arm, after lathering it with soap.

“I guess this makes you a _goodly, gallant Knight_. And that would make _me_ …” He begins.

He see’s he’s managed to make a frail smile crack her frail exterior.

“…My fair maiden?”” She answers.

“I’d make a _very ugly_ maiden.” He tells her honestly. Narrowing his eyes.

She seems to have thawed and regained some of her sweetness. She leans closer to him and throws her soggy arms about his shoulders and holds him close. He doesn’t give a damn that her sopping hair was making his shirt sleeves wet. He held her all the same.

 _“Don’t tell_ the baby. But today is one of those days where I could really down _an entire glass_ of whiskey…” She murmurs.

“I’ll keep that _to myself,_ don’t worry….” He smiles, his bare hand slipping down her wet, hot back.

“She didn’t just give me my _marching orders,_ Thomas…” She tells him, sighing the words into their hug. He pulls back and waits to hear more.

“She called me into her office, mid-way through Erik’s lecture. And she said…” She pauses. Drawing in breath and summoning the courage to tell him. “…She said such awful things to me, together with my notice.” She explains.

He knew that what he was about to hear _wouldn’t_ be kind. She had spoken before of Matron’s thorough _distaste_ of her. It was in the tasks she did that were never good enough. Nothing was ever cleaned _properly,_ and no patient was ever _tucked in enough_ for _her liking_ if Vianne had been the attending nurse. She’d recall those anecdotes to him at the end of the day, as she was unlacing her boots and rubbing her tired feet as they made themselves ready for bed. She’d told him, time and time again, of every inadequacy in her behaviorthat she’d been sniped at for by Matron Davis.

“She insulted _you. Me. Our children_. She called me…a _waste of skin_ and _uniform_. She called Julia and Arthur _fatherless bastards_. She very impolitely, implied I was a _whore_ that shouldn’t have had _the effrontery_ to walk among her nurses. She offended me in _every manner_ possible. She tried to hide behind her bible and insist she was doing god’s _damn bidding_ in dismissing me. I pointed it in her face and _raged, seethed_ , that if she really wanted to understand god’s faith, she would’ve looked past all her fond ugliness to see all the _beauty, love_ and _forgiveness_ , in that book.” She explains, emerging from her timid stupor into her usual mood of fiery liveliness.

Thomas’s face was an indescribable mask. But she could see his jaw was clenched and his eyes were beyond a shade of _vivid_ , in their anger.

“I’m sure she could have relieved you of your position without _such poison_ , if she had a heart in that _baron chest_ of hers.” He eludes lowly. He strokes the back of her wet head.

“Today, and not for the first time in my life, I felt the crushing, weight, of what it feels like, to be _a failure_.” She tells him.

He sighs angrily.

“Me and Erik sat in that public house, this afternoon. In that dark, smoky room filled with the stench of working men and stale ale, and tobacco ash, and I _felt as low_ as I’ve felt in a very long while…” She explains.

“I’ll _never nurse_ again. Maybe _that’s what_ I’m in mourning for…” She informs.

 _“What?”_  Thomas asks, dumbfounded.

“I have _no_ character, and _no_ reference. 11 years of work, unaccounted for. She not only _cut short_ my career as a nurse, she effectively _killed it.”_ She explains.

His jaw grits again. The veins in his neck straining prominent.

“If you think I’m going to let that _evil old bat_ rob you, the hardest working nurse I’ve _ever met_ , of a reference, she has _another thing_ coming…” He pledges. As he tucks her close and kisses the top of her wet hair. She smiles as his arms come around her. Dipping into the water, he didn’t care if he got soaked. It was a collateral hazard. But one he was willing to take.

His kiss said the same thing as his touch had earlier. His comfort, and his kindness. _It all said one thing;_

_I am here. And I am yours._

 

~

 


End file.
